Is your ad too loud?

Beyond a horrible idea, inane acting, brain-melting jingles, there is one annoying thing about advertising that causes people to change the channel. It's the level at which the adverts are aired on TV. There's nothing more irritating than going from what you're watching to the commercial break and having your eardrums about to start bleeding from the massive increase in volume while they try to shill potato chips at you.

Reuters reports that Italy's government plans to clamp down on broadcasters who turn up the volume with fines.

Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni said research showed Italy's three main channels on average raised the volume on adverts by 50 percent compared with ordinary programming, even though this is banned under Italian law.

As the annoyance factor can be another reason for people to change the channel or block out advertising, you'd think it would be something that ad people, clients, and broadcasters would care about, instead of trying to blast us off our couches.

I came across this bit from the FCC:

The "Mute" button on TV remote controls is also useful to "blank" excessively loud audio. Manually controlling volume levels with the remote control remains the simplest approach to reducing excessive volume levels.

Well, thanks FCC! Now that's what I call helpful! ;)