Public safety campaigns face a growing challenge: the audiences most at risk are often the hardest to reach. Teen boys (13–17) don't consume media in broad demographic groups - they navigate fragmented digital communities shaped by gaming, sport and social platforms. Counter Terrorism Policing needed a fundamentally different approach to ensure its 'What You Share Leaves a Trace' safeguarding campaign reached the right young people with the greatest chance of cut-through.
The campaign was developed in response to a rise in under-18s being arrested for terrorism offences and referred to prevent following the sharing or consumption of terrorist content online. The objective was not simply to generate awareness, but to engage teen boys with messaging that reflected the real-world consequences of their online behaviour in a way that was relevant, responsible, and appropriate for their age.
Qualitative audience research commissioned by Counter Terrorism Policing revealed that young people were most motivated by the potential impact of their online actions on their future opportunities, family relationships, and digital lives. These insights became the foundation of both the creative approach and media strategy.
SuperAwesome's objective was to transform those behavioural insights into a privacy-safe media plan using Awesome Intelligence, moving beyond broad demographic targeting to reach the most relevant teen audiences while ensuring the campaign remained appropriate for older teens and avoided younger users entirely.
By combining audience intelligence, contextual media planning, and dedicated teen guardrails, the campaign set out to prove that complex public safety messaging could achieve meaningful engagement with one of the hardest audiences to reach online.
Counter Terrorism Policing recognised that broad demographic targeting alone would not effectively engage teen boys with an important safeguarding message. Instead, the campaign combined behavioural research with SuperAwesome's Awesome Intelligence platform to build a data-driven, privacy-safe strategy rooted in a deep understanding of youth audiences.
From demographics to audience intelligence
Counter Terrorism Policing developed the campaign strategy using audience insight, behavioural research, and qualitative testing with young people, powered by SuperAwesome’s Awesome Intelligence platform to deliver a compliant, data-driven, media plan.
Rather than planning against a generic "Boys 13–17" audience, SuperAwesome used non-personal data to model two distinct audience segments based on motivations, interests, and media behaviours.
‘Advanced Gamers’ represented digitally immersed teens whose identities revolve around gaming communities, YouTube, Twitch, and social media, while ‘Pro-Players’ represented sport-driven teens who express competitiveness through both gaming and sport and consume content across YouTube and connected TV.
This shift from age and gender to behavioural audience modelling allowed the campaign to reach young people based on who they are and how they engage with digital media.
Contextual media planning
Once the audiences were identified, SuperAwesome mapped them across the fragmented digital landscape using its proprietary audience classification, curation, and moderation capabilities.
Premium YouTube content was selected using a combination of proprietary research, historical campaign performance, and emerging youth trends. Additional contextual targeting ensured ads appeared alongside the gaming and sports content most relevant to each audience, while optimized YouTube video formats maximised completed views of the campaign's critical message. Paid media was further reinforced through Counter Terrorism Policing's owned social channels to maximise reach and consistency.
Creative built specifically for teens
Qualitative audience research found that messaging centred on future opportunities, family approval, and the real-world consequences of sharing harmful content resonated more strongly than traditional enforcement-led communications. These findings informed the campaign's creative approach, which reflected realistic scenarios and language designed to connect with teenage audiences.
Recognising the differences between younger (13–15) and older (16–17) teens, creative was also tailored to ensure messaging remained relevant across both age groups.
Dedicated teen guardrails
Delivering a serious safeguarding campaign to young audiences required more than effective targeting. SuperAwesome applied its dedicated teen guardrails, grounded in regulatory and platform expectations, to ensure the campaign reached only age-appropriate teen audiences while avoiding younger users. These guidelines enabled Counter Terrorism Policing to deliver a more contemporary creative approach while meeting strict compliance obligations with confidence.
Together, behavioural insight, compliant audience intelligence, contextual media planning and dedicated teen expertise created a campaign capable of delivering an important public safety message where it mattered most: in the digital environments teen boys already trust and engage with every day.
The campaign demonstrated that combining behavioural insight, compliant audience intelligence, and contextual media planning can successfully engage one of the hardest audiences to reach with an important public safety message.
By replacing broad demographic targeting with two carefully modelled audience segments, Counter Terrorism Policing reached teen boys in the digital environments where they were already highly engaged, while ensuring messaging remained appropriate for older teens and avoided younger audiences.
The campaign generated 18 million+ impressions, drove ~100,000 new users to the Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) website, received around 70,000 TikTok likes, and increased Counter Terrorism Policing's TikTok audience by approximately 4,000 followers, providing valuable insight to inform youth safeguarding campaigns.
Most significantly, the data-driven YouTube strategy delivered exceptional attention metrics, achieving a 66.17% View Rate, +26.17% above the 40% benchmark.
Performance remained strong across both audiences. Advanced Gamers achieved a 66.53% View Rate, while Pro-Players achieved 64.86%, demonstrating successful resonance with both digitally native and sport-driven audiences despite their different behaviours and content preferences.
As Rochelle D'Cruz, Counter Terrorism Policing HQ, concluded: "The consistently strong performance across both audience cohorts demonstrated that combining behavioural insight with contextual media planning can successfully engage young audiences with complex public safety messaging."
Beyond the campaign, the work demonstrated a broader lesson for organisations seeking to engage youth audiences: understanding who young people are, where they spend time and what motivates them is essential to delivering meaningful impact, particularly when the message has real-world consequences.
This campaign proved that privacy-safe audience intelligence can deliver critical public safety messaging to young people who need it most.
