SB 576 Streaming Audio Compliance
SB 576 makes streaming platforms responsible for ad loudness, not the agency that delivered the creative. Validate incoming ads against CALM Act thresholds before they reach California viewers.
Your platform, your liability
California Senate Bill 576, signed into law in September 2024, extends the federal CALM Act's loudness requirements to streaming video platforms. Starting July 1, 2026, any platform delivering video ads to California viewers must transmit them at the same average loudness as surrounding content.
The law holds the transmitting platform accountable. Not the advertiser, not the agency, not the DSP. A hot creative that arrives via programmatic through three intermediaries is still your compliance problem the moment it airs on your platform.
California represents roughly one in eight US viewers, which means most national CTV inventory falls under this requirement. And the FCC opened a parallel rulemaking in February 2025 (MB Docket 25-72) to explore applying the same rules at the federal level. This is a compliance obligation, not an optional best practice.
The CALM Act standard
The CALM Act references ATSC A/85, which specifies how loudness is measured and what levels commercials must meet. These are the thresholds your platform must enforce:
| Parameter | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Integrated loudness target | -24 LKFS (= -24 LUFS) |
| Tolerance | +/- 2 dB (range: -22 to -26 LKFS) |
| True peak ceiling | -2 dBTP |
| Measurement algorithm | ITU-R BS.1770 |
LKFS and LUFS are the same unit under different naming conventions. ATSC uses LKFS; EBU and most digital audio tools use LUFS. Both refer to Loudness Units relative to Full Scale, measured using the ITU-R BS.1770 algorithm.
Why SSAI normalization isn't enough
VAST tags carry no loudness metadata. When an ad arrives via VAST, your platform receives a media file URL but no indication of its loudness level. You either trust it or normalize it in real time.
Server-side ad insertion platforms that normalize audio typically target -24 LKFS. But normalization is reactive and lossy. If a creative is mastered at -16 LUFS, which is common for digital-first production, your SSAI pipeline pulls it down by 8 dB. That compresses the dynamic range, makes dialogue harder to hear, and degrades the listening experience for your viewers.
More importantly, normalization doesn't equal compliance verification. Your platform applied a correction, but you have no record of what the original level was, whether the correction was sufficient, or whether the creative actually meets the standard after processing. Under SB 576, you need to be able to demonstrate that ads transmitted to California viewers met CALM Act thresholds.
The alternative is proactive validation at intake: measure every incoming creative before it enters rotation, reject or flag anything out of spec, and keep a compliance record.
How Advalidation validates incoming creatives
Advalidation scans VAST tags at intake. It downloads every media file in rotation and measures integrated loudness (LUFS) and true peak (dBTP) using ITU-R BS.1770, the measurement method referenced by ATSC A/85 and SB 576.
You set the threshold per ad spec: -24 LKFS for ATSC A/85, -23 LUFS for EBU R128, or a custom value that matches your platform's internal standard. Each creative in a VAST rotation gets its own measurement and a clear pass/fail result before it enters rotation.
Ongoing monitoring catches re-delivered or swapped creatives after go-live, so a compliant creative that gets replaced mid-flight doesn't slip through. Results are available in the scan report and via the API for integration into your ad ops pipeline.
Your compliance deadline is July 1, 2026. Contact us to set up loudness validation against CALM Act thresholds.
References
SB 576 full text — California Legislature
ATSC A/85:2013 — ATSC
IAB Tech Lab Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines — IAB Tech Lab
FCC CALM Act Information — FCC
FCC NPRM, MB Docket 25-72 — FCC (February 2025)