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Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

arstechnica.com

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Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#71

Post by dylan604 »

kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem.

loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management.

or the streaming platforms could take over ad delivery and take it on as part of their internal content management.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#72

Post by wetpaws »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

>louder ads are coming from an ad provider

Ad is coming from provider. Volume is not.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#73

Post by grayhatter »

tzs wrote: post #58
Calvin02 wrote: post #6

I found this to be an issue on YouTube. It wasn’t necessarily malicious. I often put on a no-talking video in the background while reading and the ad interruptions became really loud. I eventually just ended up subscribing, but this is great to see.

The ads sometimes being loud on YouTube usually doesn't bother me (except recently when it was an extra loud woman shouting something like "My husband fucked me all night last night" and proceeded to extol the virtues of the product that I am supposed to believe allowed for that bedroom performance--that was so annoying and it was so different from the ads they normally show me it earned YouTube a week with the ad bl…

Your willingness to try to play fair to advertisers (a group with an earned reputation of going out of their way to avoid anything resembling good faith) is admirable, but won't show up in metrics.

Protect your attention (and frustration levels) by running adblock full time. If you want to influence their behavior so everyone stops running annoying ads. You have to give the ad sellers a reason to re-evaluate what ads they're willing to show. The only way you can do that is increasing the number of users who don't view ads. Starting with in off, makes you a user who views ads, not the kind making a point.

It's unlikely that you're meaningfully able to influence the system. You're much more likely to respond and adapt to the system, so it's more likely that youtube has trained you to watch ads.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#74

Post by bayarearefugee »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

> but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem.

Then the streaming services are failing to punish their ad providers, so they still have culpability.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#75

Post by LoganDark »

captn3m0 wrote: post #70
LoganDark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main issue is devices treating SDR as inherently dim, and then upgrading HDR to extremely bright. I want my SDR white as bright as the brightest HDR white -- or at the very least configurable to that. Then HDR wouldn't be such a flashbang. And I wouldn't be leaving most of my display's capability on the table in daily use -- it's super annoying that my display is capable of more than doubling its brightne…

I wrote superbright to be able to force it: https://github.com/captn3m0/superbright (fork of BrightIntosh). The display does get hit after 10-15 minutes of this though.

Yeah, that's one of those third-party apps, though not one that I've seen before -- but it has the same issue of just plain feeling weird. At the end of the day, a hacky solution is a hacky solution, but I honestly can't wait until OLED makes the backlight obsolete.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#76

Post by zapzupnz »

Calvin02 wrote: post #6

I found this to be an issue on YouTube. It wasn’t necessarily malicious. I often put on a no-talking video in the background while reading and the ad interruptions became really loud. I eventually just ended up subscribing, but this is great to see.

Voilà, I think you may have fallen for their trap. That's why they've done nothing about this to date even though volume normalisation is a solved problem.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#77

Post by stevemk14ebr »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

You can do volume normalization, it's a thing. Lets not pretend this is some black magic.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#78

Post by beepbooptheory »

stevemk14ebr wrote: post #77
dylan604 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

You can do volume normalization, it's a thing. Lets not pretend this is some black magic.

Probably makes more sense here to use a compressor at the end of the chain right? It would be kind of surprising to me if there isnt one already..

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#79

Post by sublinear »

kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

The ads are also timed poorly. This has not been fixed for decades. No amount of audio normalization can fix a quieter moment being interrupted.

This is just as much the fault of streaming platform exclusive content having no time to breathe. Nobody sane really wants to sit through an episode of anything that lasts longer than 20 to 30 minutes. The binge watching era died when the ads became forced upon all tiers, but there is a compromise that is proven to work. Just go back to the old episodic format of broadcast/cable already.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#80

Post by amiga386 »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

Option 3: Streaming platforms add to their contracts with ad delivery networks that they must faithfully represent a ReplayGain value in the metadata of every advert before delivery. The streaming platform can then have its clients adjust the volume they play adverts at.

Bonus: the clients can sample the advert audio and send back the computed ReplayGain, compared to the claimed ReplayGain. Add a penalty clause in the contract for every single advert delivered louder than claimed.

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