Shaping a safer, smarter future for children’s media
Introduction
Cricket Media and Deloitte Consulting LLP (Deloitte US) are working together to help shape a more responsible future for children’s media through an innovative approach to AI‑powered contextual marketing grounded in trust and purpose. By combining human insight with scalable, trustworthy AI capabilities, the collaboration aims to help brands engage young audiences responsibly—supporting enhanced compliance, relevance, and protection across today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.
How Cricket Media and Deloitte US are advancing purpose‑driven, AI‑powered contextual marketing
The situation
The past few years has seen an explosion of children’s content across different streaming channels, presenting opportunities for brands looking to reach families. However, finding the right content to associate brand messages with can be challenging. And the stakes are high: any solution not only needs to help brands align their campaigns with relevant content but also to reach the intended audience in compliance with regulations, many of which require brands to use contextual marketing solutions to reach families.
Cricket Media’s Sensical, an industry leading kids’ streamer, recognized that traditional advertising solutions—which depend on keywords and whitelists—could struggle to do this. So, their innovative advertising solution SENSICALMATCH™ was developed to meet dynamic audience needs as well as regulatory demands, including such regulations as The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the United States.
However, like other tools available in the market, SENSICALMATCH™ was resource-intensive and difficult to scale—and as such advertisers risked wasted spend and missed connections. Here Sensical saw an opportunity for transformative, technology-driven change, and turned to Deloitte United States to help make it a reality.
The solution
Cricket Media’s Sensical worked with Deloitte US on an initiative to test how AI could accelerate and scale the human-led approach to assessing children’s content to support more efficient, compliant, and precise contextual advertising for family-focused campaigns at scale.
The teams co-designed and tested an AI-driven approach to enhance the speed and accuracy of contextual analysis across large volumes of video content. This hybrid solution, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon Bedrock, combined Sensical’s human review with Deloitte US’s deep industry knowledge, innovative Generative AI (GenAI) capabilities, and Trustworthy AI framework. The result was a new solution that blended human nuance with machine scalability.
Key solution highlights include:
- AI-powered contextual marketing engine: The team developed a GenAI and machine-learning foundation using AWS SageMaker, enabling real-time, precise media analysis of text, images, audio, and metadata—surpassing the speed of human review.
- Precision and psychographic intelligence: The solution went beyond keywords, making nuanced determinations of age-appropriateness, topics, and intangible content traits to align ads with young audiences’ interests—enabling brands to reach previously inaccessible segments safely.
- Embedded trust and safety: At the core of the solution was Deloitte US’s Trustworthy AI approach, which helped enable transparent, responsible, and regulation-compliant outcomes. This approach was built on ethical frameworks and principles grounded in child development science.
- Ecosystem-driven excellence: The team developed a scalable system using Converge by Deloitte platforms, AWS technology, and IndustryAdvantage™ insights, designed to adapt across geographies and media environments.
“At Cricket Media, we’re setting a new standard in age-appropriate contextual content targeting, recognizing that kids have unique tastes and interests,” said Eric Berger, CEO of Cricket Media. “The collaboration demonstrated that the AI capabilities powered by AWS and Amazon Bedrock enabled us to connect brands to young audiences with a level of nuance and responsibility that scales to help ensure relevance and reach across the vast sea of kids’ content.”
The impact
The exploratory work highlighted significant efficiency gains that lay the groundwork for a new benchmark for business performance and ethical stewardship in children’s media. The market-leading accuracy and efficiency of SENSICALMATCH ™ have set a new standard, identifying age, topic, genre, and inappropriate content with more than 98% accuracy, surpassing legacy human review rates. Tasks that once took an hour for a 10-minute video can now be completed in minutes, at scale, through a hybrid “human + machine” approach that continuously improves with each review.
In real-world pilots with major media agencies, the platform achieved significant results that could be promising at scale:
- Reduced cost per mille (cost per thousand impressions) by 41% on standard YouTube content.
- Increased video completion rates by more than 5% on short-form videos and by 50% on YouTube Shorts.
- Delivering at scale, the GenAI-driven contextual matching has empowered SENSICALMATCH ™ to offer industry-leading solutions to some of the world’s largest advertisers, combining cost-efficiency, transparency, and ongoing improvement through integrated feedback loops.
- Setting an industry benchmark, the solution leverages Deloitte US’s trusted GenAI ecosystem to provide a repeatable, scalable model for widespread adoption across technology, media, telecommunications and beyond.
“This initiative aligns with the team’s belief in the ethical use of technology to enhance lives and benefit society,” said Ben Stiller, Principal, Consulting, Deloitte US. “By integrating AI and GenAI Converge by Deloitte solutions into SENSICALMATCH™, Deloitte is helping to create a safer advertising ecosystem for children while helping companies maintain compliance and brand protection.”
About the collaboration
The collaboration between Cricket Media and Deloitte US offered meaningful insights into how AI and human knowledge can work together to deliver safer, more relevant advertising experiences for children and families. The project also served as a valuable testbed for assessing responsible AI practices in the children’s media sector, deepening both organizations’ understanding of the opportunities and challenges in applying emerging technologies to sensitive content.
The insights gained are helping to reshape how brands and platforms approach relevance, safety, and contextual precision, demonstrating that data-driven, psychographic-informed approaches can strengthen trust and compliance without compromising audience protection. By integrating pioneering GenAI innovation, deep industry knowledge, and a dedication to ethics and trust, SENSICALMATCH™ is addressing today’s challenges while helping to pave a responsible, forward-thinking path for the future of media.
The solution is transforming reach and relevance, enabling major brands to target ads with a data-driven, psychographic-nuanced approach while maintaining trust, safety, and regulatory compliance.
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Gillian Crossan
Dr. Tim Bottke
