Your problem is that serialized strings contains escape slashes that are not evaluated as such, because the wrapping quote is a single quote.
You are using:
$v = \'a:2:{i:0;b:0;s:8:\\"auto_add\\";a:0:{}}\'; // wrong
You have to use either
$v = "a:2:{i:0;b:0;s:8:\\"auto_add\\";a:0:{}}"; // ok
or
$v = \'a:2:{i:0;b:0;s:8:"auto_add";a:0:{}}\'; // ok
By the way, you should never manually unserialize values in WordPress database.
When you need to get an option (or a metadata, or anything that may be serialized) use WP functions: they unserialize the value when needed.
E.g. for options, use get_option
.
If you are interested in how WordPress do unserialization see maybe_unserialize
and is_serialized
.