The current monetisation crisis was destabilising the entire kids content industry, Animaj co-founder Gregory Dray told MIP Junior delegates in Cannes today.

"From accurate measurement to tight restrictions, especially on YouTube, the obstacles are real. But we cannot afford to lose that battle," Dray said in his opening day keynote, warning that "the path to success is not going to be easy" and encouraging the industry to rally together to fight to fix the crisis. 

He also called on YouTube "to care"... about the state of the industry and the fact that its domination creates also some sort of responsibility. 

He cited estimates of more than 400 million under-13s visiting YouTube monthly, and said 15% of YouTube's global viewership was going to kids and family content but the category was only taking 2% of the platform's gross advertising revenues.

"Let's recognise it. YouTube has done an incredible job to democratise consumption of kids and family content over the past 10 years.

"But where are we going? Where are we going as an industry if we are not in a position to monetise the attention and the engagement precisely where they take place. Reach without monetisation is just a marketing tactic. It is not a business model," he said.  

YouTube's kids content advertising is currently contextual compared to other verticals, which are able to be monetised through targeted advertising.

"We cannot continue like this... in just a few years, we'll all be out of business," he said, acknowledging that YouTube was "not going to make the effort".

Animaj launched the Lumee joint venture this year with Hasbro Entertainment as a premium kids and family advertising network to address this challenge, he said. Lumee also represents Disney channels in the U.S. and Latam. 

"We have united these three inventories into a premium, scaled and brand-safe family offering that covers the entire spectrum of the category, from preschool to tweens and teens. Lumee is a single, high-trust entry point into the massive, but fragmented YouTube and CTV ecosystems, offering a new business model for an industry in flux."

Dray said the new platform had done "a very simple thing".

"We have chosen to take our destiny into our own hands. Lumee is... a new form of partnership, a new form of alliance built to solve the industry's most pressing problem: sustainability.

In a keynote that highlighted a litany of problems, Dray pointed to the positioning of the kids sector.  

He said he continued “to believe that the kids and family sector is rarely viewed through the correct strategic lens”.

"It is consistently treated as a walled off category when it's actually the media industry's leading indicator," he said.

Dray described the current environment as "difficult times where our business is facing an extremely complex transition".

Another problem to solve was "producing faster and cheaper by embracing responsible technology".

"The question with AI is always the same: Are we building for the world that's coming or defending the world that's leaving?," Dray said.

"At the end of the day, to guide us and do the right thing, I always keep in mind one key idea: audiences never fall in love with technology. They fall in love with stories and the people behind them."

He said AI was being leveraged "to bring the most innovative tools to our storytellers". This included, for example, a sketch-to-motion tool.

"We accelerate specific parts of the animation workflow while keeping artists firmly in creative control. This helps us scale production while maintaining the quality and creative ambition required to build enduring franchises," he said.