The Gabby Petito, Ruby Franke, and Idaho student murders cases all captured national news attention and the public’s dark fascination. But perhaps even more impactful than the mainstream media coverage? The true-crime podcasts.

In a boom so strong that Hulu made a hit parody TV show about it, the true-crime-podcast industry has enjoyed steady success since This American Life’s Serial first made waves in 2014. As the genre has continued to expand, with dramatic and documentary TV and streaming series joining the fray, critics have raised ethical concerns about whether true-crime coverage can be exploitative, while fans have argued that victims’ stories deserve to be told.

The often gruesome topics themselves, as well as the ongoing ethical considerations, represent a push and pull that could make an advertiser pause. Should brands get in on true crime’s audience, or is the genre too much of a risk to brand safety?

“Advertising has always been challenging in the true-crime space, particularly for brands that are sensitive to brand safety,” Jordan Newman, head of content partnerships at Spotify, told us. “There are a lot of brands that don’t want to be associated with graphic subjects.”

Posing an additional wrinkle, brands that are okay with the subject matter may have more podcast advertising options than ever before, Newman said, “which is great, but it also means that attracting those ad dollars becomes more and more competitive.”

Continue reading here.—JN

Ever since the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive helped skyrocket the popularity of Formula 1 in the US, other sports organizations have been trying to replicate the effect.

That now includes F1 Academy, the women’s F1 racing championship, which is getting the Netflix treatment with a docuseries that premiered Wednesday.

As part of its official sponsorship with F1 and F1 Academy, American Express is working with the organization, Netflix, and Reese Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine, which produced the docuseries, to promote F1: The Academy while offering cardmembers access to content and experiences around the sport, as many American Express sponsorships aim to do.

Ideally, the growth of the show and the brand will go hand in hand, American Express VP of Global Media Jill Hamilton said.

“We hope for an amplifying effect in terms of our investment here [creating] more viewership and more interest in the show, more broadly fueling our mission to back F1A and the drivers,” she told Marketing Brew.

On track: After becoming the official payments partner of F1 in 2023, American Express inked a deal with F1 Academy last year. As part of the partnership, American Express execs learned of the docuseries through conversations with Netflix and Hello Sunshine, and Hamilton said they immediately wanted to get involved.

“We all witnessed the incredible accelerant that Drive to Survive was for F1, and when we heard that Netflix was going to have F1: The Academy, I think our hope and ambition was that this show would be that exact same accelerant for the F1A drivers,” she said.

Read more here.—AM

You know you’ve made it when you’re verb material. Google it. I’ll Uber there. Let me just Venmo you.

With over 2 billion guest arrivals since its inception, Airbnb, the travel company that upended the very idea of a hotel, has been approaching verb status for some time.

It’s a rarefied and lucrative territory that just about any major company is (at least privately) angling towards. And maybe that’s why last month’s debut of Airbnb’s next chapter put verb ambitions front and center, proclaiming: “Now you can Airbnb more than an Airbnb.” Or, as CEO Brian Chesky put it: “Basically, it’s the Airbnb of anything.”

The company unveiled a spate of new features that, indeed, majorly expand the company’s potential reach, branching out from homes and apartments to experiences and services.

It’s all been a long time in the making, CFO Ellie Mertz told CFO Brew.

“If you think about our history, we have talked about what we call ‘expanding beyond the core’ for some time,” she explained, adding that the company started to do so before the pandemic, which swiftly recalibrated everything as travel screeched to a halt.

Now, the company is ready to focus on a new era of travel again.

“What we’ve done the last couple of years is continue to focus on that core business, make sure that we recovered well, and were in a stronger position exiting the pandemic versus how we entered it,” Mertz noted. The company spent the same period of time “retooling” its infrastructure and tech stack to make the innovations possible.

Read more on CFO Brew.—NP

Check out the latest episode of The Refill, the AI-voiced audio recap of the Marketing Brew stories that drive your marketing career forward. This week, learn how advertisers are testing the waters on Threads, the secret to going viral while maintaining brand safety, and the science behind the perfect movie trailer.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your audio media every Thursday.

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Business Insider reported on the decline of free views for TikTok Shop videos.
• The Wall Street Journal wrote about the law firm going after brands for their “Made in USA” claims.
• Bloomberg wrote about how YouTube creators are looking to break into the world of scripted programming.