True crime podcast CPM: what the rate cards say

There is no published true crime podcast CPM. Every seller rate card that lists category rates leaves True Crime off it, and the most recent dated reference, Libsyn Ads' August 2024 marketplace report, put the genre in the high teens to low 20s against a $21.25 overall average. That absence is worth understanding before you quote a number, because the format you are selling moves the rate further than the genre label does.

What the published sources actually say

Libsyn Ads ran a monthly marketplace rate report built on its own sales data and ended the series in September 2024 at a $21.37 average. Its August 2024 edition named Government at $29, Technology at $29 and Health and Fitness at $24 as the highest categories, then grouped True Crime with Sports and Fiction as the more accessible ones in the high teens to low 20s. That is the last time a seller published a true crime figure from transaction data.

The current Libsyn Ads guide lists ten categories for baked-in host reads: Business at $30, Health and Fitness at $27, Technology and Education at $26, Fiction at $24, Science, Comedy and Society and Culture at $23, and Games and Leisure at $22. True Crime is not among them, and the guide says its figures came from the company's in-house sales team and founders rather than from a transaction sample.

ADOPTER Media, which buys rather than sells, refreshed its benchmarks in July 2026 using campaign data from more than 150,000 placed ads. It names true crime alongside business and health as genres that continue to command higher rates, crediting audience loyalty and advertiser demand, but publishes no true crime number.

Format ranges are the numbers you can actually use

Since there is no category anchor, price from the unit. Both a seller and a buyer publish format ranges, and they agree more than they disagree.

A true crime show selling a baked-in mid-roll host read and a true crime show selling back-catalogue dynamic inventory are selling products that differ by roughly ten dollars per thousand on these ranges. No genre premium closes a gap that size. Writing down the unit before the rate is the single change that makes a true crime quote defensible, and what podcast CPM means covers the calculation underneath it.

Why the true crime label is a weak pricing signal

True crime is one of the largest categories in podcasting by show count, which means the label covers investigative series with years of reporting behind them and weekly case-summary shows recorded in an evening. An advertiser cannot price those the same way, and the genre table would have to hide that spread inside one number.

Advertiser suitability also cuts both ways here and it operates on content, not category. In display advertising, Integral Ad Science's work with Reuters found that blunt keyword blocking demonetised more than half of stories that otherwise met suitability standards, which is the same mechanism that makes an episode describing a violent crime harder to place than one covering a fraud investigation. That is a finding from a different medium, so treat it as a reason to ask a prospective sponsor about their suitability rules rather than as a podcast statistic.

The loyalty argument runs the other way. ADOPTER Media's reason for placing true crime among the higher-rate genres is audience behaviour: people who follow a case-based series tend to listen through episodes and come back weekly. If your own completion and repeat-listening evidence supports that, it is a stronger argument than any category table.

Build a true crime quote from your own evidence

Start with a fixed delivery window applied consistently across recent episodes. Libsyn Ads measures reach as the downloads a new episode receives in its first 30 days, and if you use that convention, label it beside the forecast instead of mixing it with lifetime totals. How to measure podcast CPM covers where the numerator and the base usually drift apart.

Name the reference you are anchoring to, with its date. "Libsyn Ads' August 2024 marketplace report placed True Crime in the high teens to low 20s" is checkable. "True crime CPMs are around $25" is not, and a media buyer will know it.

Separate the media from the work. Script development, approval rounds, category exclusivity, a newsletter mention, custom reporting and permission to reuse the host recording all belong on their own lines even if you bundle the total later. How much to charge for podcast sponsorship treats the whole package rather than the rate alone.

Bring your subject specificity to the conversation. A sponsor selling a home security product and a sponsor selling a meal kit are evaluating different things about your show, and the part of true crime you cover matters more to them than the genre label. Describe the subjects that repeatedly draw delivery, keep declared listener information separate from inferred attributes, and let the sponsor judge commercial fit.

Compare against categories that do have published rates

Where a genre table exists, it gives you a sanity check. Fiction sits at $24 on the current Libsyn Ads table, Comedy at $23, and business podcast CPM benchmarks at $30, with the same baked-in host-read caveat on all three. A true crime quote landing well outside that $22 to $30 band for comparable inventory needs a reason you can state.

The wider podcast CPM benchmarks page puts format, placement and category side by side, which is the order a buyer evaluates them in.

Check the source pages again before each sales cycle. A live rate card changes, Libsyn's monthly series has already ended once, and a screenshot from two years ago does not become a standing industry benchmark.

Start with Podder Analytics to keep one consistent delivery window and the audience evidence behind your next true crime sponsorship quote.