developer-ads

A guide to paid advertising aimed at developers through channels such as Carbon Ads, BuySellAds, Reddit, and developer newsletters.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose advertising channels, create ads for technical audiences, target by technology stack, and assess whether paid traffic is worth the cost.
Why use it?
Many developers use ad blockers and distrust broad marketing, so ordinary advertising may reach few relevant people. This focuses on developer-specific placements, technical targeting, useful messages, and measuring results.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jonathimer/devmarketing-skills/developer-ads
Any agent
npx skills add jonathimer/devmarketing-skills --skill developer-ads
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jonathimer/devmarketing-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 97 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,570 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00097 $0.02570
Opus 5 $0.00048 $0.01285
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00514
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00257

Measured 3d ago against content hash b6fd501cf171, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

developer-ads scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/developer-ads/SKILL.md · 439 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 439 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Developer Ads

Overview

Most advertising doesn't work for developers. They use ad blockers, distrust marketing, and share bad experiences widely. But targeted advertising on developer-specific platforms—done thoughtfully—can drive qualified awareness and traffic.

This skill covers the platforms that actually reach developers, how to create ads that don't trigger immediate dismissal, and how to measure whether your spend is working.

Why Most Ads Don't Reach Developers

The Ad Blocker Problem

Estimates suggest 50-70% of developers use ad blockers. This makes most display advertising ineffective:

  • Google Display Network: Heavily blocked
  • Facebook/Instagram: Limited developer targeting
  • General programmatic: Low reach, wrong audience

Developer Ad Resistance

Even when ads reach developers, they face skepticism:

  • Banner blindness is extreme
  • Marketing language triggers instant dismissal
  • Developers share bad ads as cautionary tales
  • Trust is hard to build, easy to lose

What Does Work

Advertising that reaches developers successfully:

  • Contextual placement: Ads on sites developers already trust
  • Value-first messaging: Leading with what you do, not superlatives
  • Technical credibility: Ads that show you understand the audience
  • Native formats: Newsletter mentions, sponsored content

Platform-by-Platform Guide

Carbon Ads

What it is: Native advertising network for developer and design websites

Where ads appear:

  • Developer documentation sites
  • Tech blogs
  • Developer tools
  • Open source project sites

Why it works:

  • Non-intrusive design
  • Respected by developers
  • Often not blocked
  • Highly contextual placement

Costs:

  • CPM-based pricing
  • Typically $2-5 CPM
  • Minimum budgets vary
  • Direct buys for premium sites

Best practices:

  • Simple, text-focused creative
  • Clear value proposition
  • Relevant to site context
  • No hype language

Limitations:

  • Limited targeting options
  • Cannot always choose specific sites
  • Creative restrictions
  • Availability varies

Read the full file on GitHub · 439 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 439 lines · 97 tokens per session scan A b6fd501cf171

Subscribe to this mod's changes

developer-ads is a skill published in the GitHub repository jonathimer/devmarketing-skills (85 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 97 tokens to every session and 2,570 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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