Home » CSAM Deterrence Campaign

Crime Stoppers WA / WA Police / Jesuit Social Services

Stop. Get Help.
Before It's Too Late.

Western Australia's first dedicated paid digital CSAM deterrence campaign. A two-funnel, dual-audience strategy across Meta, Google Performance Max, Google Search, and Reddit — reaching an estimated 3.5–4 million impressions in six weeks.

Client Crime Stoppers Western Australia

Partner Agencies WA Police Sex Crime Division
Jesuit Social Services / Stop It Now!

Campaign Period 26 April – 10 June 2026

Services Delivered

Campaign Strategy Creative Direction Media Planning & Buying Digital Advertising Post-Campaign Reporting

Market Perth & Western Australia

─ The brief ─

A first of its kind —
and why it had to be done.

Child sexual abuse material — CSAM — is not a problem without a solution. Deterrence works. But in Western Australia, no dedicated paid digital campaign had ever been built to reach individuals at risk of offending, surface consequences, and connect them with help before harm occurred. This was that campaign.

Co-funded by Crime Stoppers WA and WA Police, and delivered in partnership with Jesuit Social Services via its Stop It Now! program, the campaign was briefed to Sixteen by Nine for strategy, creative, media planning, and full campaign management. The challenge wasn't just a media problem — it was a creative and ethical one. How do you reach an audience that nobody talks about, on platforms that are deeply cautious about sensitive content, without triggering policy restrictions or doing harm in the process?

The answer was a two-funnel, dual-audience architecture running simultaneously: one stream aimed directly at individuals at risk of or engaging in CSAM offending, the other at concerned family members, partners, and friends. Both funnels pointed to the same destination — a Crime Stoppers WA triage landing page connecting users to relevant support and reporting pathways.

Challenge 01

Reaching an audience nobody advertises to

Building a campaign targeting individuals at risk of CSAM offending required navigating platform policy on Meta, Google, and Reddit simultaneously — while maintaining full compliance and campaign integrity across all channels.

Challenge 02

Creative that deters without foreclosing help

Consequence-based messaging for the primary audience had to be hard-edged enough to land — while keeping the door to help-seeking open. Every message was reviewed for dual-read risk before activation.

Challenge 03

Maintaining Crime Stoppers WA's independence

A critical trust lever for anonymous reporting audiences: Crime Stoppers WA's operational independence from WA Police had to be maintained in all public-facing materials — while both organisations co-funded the campaign.

Challenge 04

Measuring impact that can't be measured

Once a user enters the Crime Stoppers anonymous reporting environment, their details are anonymised through TOR. Direct conversion tracking of report submissions is not possible — and by design should not be. Privacy is the product.

─ The creative approach ─

Centre the offender
as responsible.

The creative strategy was built on a principle that sounds simple but is rarely executed well in this space: centre the offender as responsible, not the victim. Every message was written from that frame — consequences are real, the window to seek help is closing, but help is available and the choice to seek it belongs to them.

For the tertiary audience — the partners, parents, siblings, and friends who suspect something is wrong — the creative took a different register entirely. Empathy first. Anonymity emphasised. The barrier to action lowered as far as possible.

"You don't need to have all the answers. You just need to make the call."

Primary Audience

Consequence-based / Deterrence / Help-seeking

Hard-edged. Direct. Law enforcement is active; investigations are underway; the window to get help before consequences arrive is closing. The creative surfaced consequences without foreclosing the help-seeking pathway — every ad was reviewed for dual-read risk before activation.

Tertiary Audience

Empathy first / Anonymous reporting / Take action

Warmer in tone but equally direct in call to action. Concerned about someone? You don't need proof. You don't need to identify yourself. Crime Stoppers WA protects your identity completely — it's what you know, not who you are that matters.

The campaign videos — two audiences, two registers.

Primary Audience — Offender Deterrence / Help-seeking · Crime Stoppers WA CSAM Campaign · April–June 2026

Tertiary Audience — Family, Friends & Partners · Crime Stoppers WA CSAM Campaign · April–June 2026

─ Campaign results ─

~3.58 million impressions.
~A$22,000 total spend.

The campaign ran for six weeks across four platforms, delivering measurable reach and engagement across both audience streams. The results demonstrate both scale and precision — from 424,100 unique Western Australian accounts reached on Meta alone, to a 27.27% CTR on the tertiary Google Search ad group, to A$0.03 cost-per-view on YouTube via Google PMax TrueView.

~3.58M Total Impressions

Across Meta, Google PMax, Google Search, and Reddit for the full campaign period.

424,100 Unique Meta Reach

Western Australian accounts reached across primary and tertiary Meta campaigns combined.

A$0.24 Best Cost Per Landing Page View

Meta primary audience — exceptional cost-efficiency for a sensitive audience campaign.

78% Increase in CSAM Reports to Crime Stoppers WA

91 reports received during the campaign period vs 51 in the equivalent prior-year period. While direct attribution cannot be confirmed, the scale of uplift and absence of other known explanatory factors suggests the campaign was a significant contributing factor.

Meta — Facebook & Instagram

823,600 total video views · 424,100 unique WA accounts reached

A$0.24 CPV (primary) / A$0.45 CPV (tertiary). 90.9% male delivery on primary audience confirming strong targeting alignment. Peak age engagement in the 25–34 and 35–44 brackets across both campaigns.

Google PMax & Search

807,149 impressions · 48,600 YouTube views at A$0.03 CPV

TrueView view rate of 31.05% — well above the 20–25% benchmark. Google Search delivered 10.53% CTR on the primary Crime Stoppers ad group and a remarkable 27.27% CTR on the tertiary group, indicating high ad-to-intent alignment for those actively searching for help or reporting pathways.

1.145 million impressions · A$5.37 blended eCPM

Largest single-channel impression volume of the campaign. 56.2% of the served audience had interests in Family & Relationships — contextually relevant reach, not indifferent general audience. CTR of 0.451% blended, consistent with Reddit's benchmark range for awareness-stage campaigns.

Two funnels.
Running simultaneously.

Primary Audience

Offender Deterrence

—Individuals at risk of or engaging in CSAM offending

—Consequence-based / deterrence / help-seeking creative direction

—Hard-edged tone — law enforcement is active, the window is closing

—All traffic directed to Crime Stoppers WA triage landing page

Tertiary Audience

Family, Friends & Partners

—Concerned partners, family members, friends and colleagues

—Empathy first / anonymous reporting / take action

—Anonymity emphasised — your identity stays protected

—Stop It Now! as alternate help-seeking pathway via Google AdWords

─ Campaign outcomes ─

The number that
matters most.

Media metrics measure reach. What they can't measure is whether the campaign moved people to act. For this campaign, WA Police provided post-campaign data on CSAM-related reports received by Crime Stoppers WA during the campaign period — and the result is significant.

During the six-week campaign window, Crime Stoppers WA received 91 CSAM-related reports — compared to 51 reports in the equivalent prior-year period. That's a 78% increase above the established baseline.

78% Year-on-year uplift

91 Reports during
campaign period

51 Reports in equivalent
prior-year period

Source: WA Police / Crime Stoppers WA post-campaign reporting data

On attribution

Direct attribution cannot be confirmed — once a user enters the Crime Stoppers anonymous reporting environment, their pathway is anonymised through TOR by design. However, the scale of the uplift, the geographic alignment with campaign targeting, the time-bounded nature of the increase, and the absence of other known concurrent public awareness activity all point in the same direction. A 78% increase above an established baseline, during a defined campaign window, with a plausible mechanism and no competing explanation, is a strong directional indicator of campaign impact.

What this means for future campaigns

The 51-report prior-year baseline now serves as the established measurement benchmark for any future CSAM deterrence campaign in Western Australia. A longer time series and campaign replication would strengthen the attribution case considerably — and this result provides the foundation to make that case to funders and stakeholders.

─ Beyond the dashboard ─

Statistics communicate reach.
They cannot communicate impact.

On 17 May 2026 — three weeks into the campaign — Crime Stoppers WA received an unsolicited email from a member of the public. The sender, a child sexual abuse survivor with a psychology background and professional experience in violence research, had seen the campaign and wrote to say it had got it right.

The five specific points they raised — responsibility framing, possibility of change, consequence clarity, bystander disruption, and digestibility — correspond directly to the strategic intent embedded in the creative brief. That a victim-survivor with clinical expertise independently identified and articulated those elements is a meaningful indicator of creative effectiveness that no A/B test can replicate.

"This campaign hits the nail on the head; it centres the abuser as responsible, not the abused; it reassures people finding themselves somewhere within the aforementioned pipeline that change is possible; it makes clear the consequences if they go unrehabilitated, maintain or escalate their behaviours; it disrupts the bystander effect; and it keeps most parts of the actions and outcomes together in a digestible, realistic, raw but not distancing manner.

Our extended family recently uncovered that incestual CSA was occurring. As you can imagine, it has torn a knife through our family. Please remember that if even one child is helped through your efforts, you have stopped what can be multi-generational pain, and that alone is worthwhile."

Community respondent — 17 May 2026

"This email is a reminder that behind every campaign metric is a person. A family. In some cases, a child who is safer because someone paused, reconsidered, or reached out for help. If even one person is diverted from offending because of this campaign, we will never be able to measure that in a dashboard. But it will have happened."

Jarrod Greenwood, Campaign Director — Sixteen by Nine

─ Behind the production ─

On set.

Behind the campaign.

Professional actors were engaged to portray the offender and his partner across both video productions. All talent is paid and the scenes are dramatised representations.