TermWorksfor advertisers
The only ad channel that reaches developers while they're actually building.
TermWorks delivers contextual opportunities to verified developers in their terminal — the one place they spend their entire workday.
Start a campaign →
The problem
Every developer-targeting channel is broken in the same way.
LinkedIn
Senior engineers ignore it. Response rates for passive outreach are below 1%.
Developer newsletters
$30–100 CPM for banner blindness. Readers skim, click nothing.
Job boards
Only reaches people already looking. Misses 80% of the market.
Podcast sponsorships
No targeting, no attribution, no way to know if it worked.
The insight
Developers spend 4–8 hours a day in a terminal. They run hundreds of commands. Every command is a signal: what they're building, what stack they use, what problems they're solving.
No other channel has this signal. And no other channel has this audience by definition — every TermWorks user installed a CLI tool, which means they're a real, active developer: working engineers, CS students, and indie hackers. No marketers, no bots.
“The developer running kubectl rollout restart right now is a better target for your infrastructure product than any email list you can buy.”
How it works
1
Developer installs TermWorks
One curl command. Works with zsh and bash. The CLI hooks into their shell and classifies command activity locally.
2
Activity is classified, not recorded
Raw commands stay on their machine. Only the category — 'rust', 'kubernetes', 'ai' — is sent. Privacy-first by design.
3
Your opportunity appears in context
Between commands, occasionally, a short message is shown. The developer running Terraform sees your infrastructure product. The developer running pip sees your Python tool.
4
You pay per verified impression
Impressions are validated before you're charged. Bots, low-quality sessions, and fraud are filtered out automatically.
What it looks like
No banners. No popups. One line, in their terminal, at a natural break.
$ cargo build --release
Compiling myapp v0.1.0
Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 4.2s
Sponsored: Ship Rust services to production in one command — try Shuttle → term.works/r/shuttle
$ ▎
Shown after natural command completion. Never mid-command. Never blocking.
Targeting
Target by what developers are actually doing right now:
kubernetes / terraform / docker
Infrastructure & DevOps teams
rust / go / c++
Systems engineers
python / ai
ML & AI practitioners
node / web / react
Frontend & full-stack
database / sql
Backend & data engineers
git
Broad — all active developers
Also filter by: seniority level, remote preference, open-to-work status.
Pricing
Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). You set your bid, daily budget, and total budget. Only pay for impressions that pass fraud validation.
Sponsored tool / product
$3–10 CPMBroad reach, low friction
Job listing
$10–25 CPMTargeted by stack + seniority
Startup role / founding engineer
$15–30 CPMHigh-intent senior audience
Compare: developer newsletter sponsorships run $30–100 CPM with no behavioral targeting. TermWorks delivers higher-intent impressions at 10–30% of the cost.
Who should advertise
🏗
Developer tools & infra
Reach the exact developers who would use your product, while they're using the competing one.
🏢
Hiring teams
Access passive senior candidates who aren't on LinkedIn. Pay only when they see your listing.
🚀
Startups
Precise, affordable reach into the engineering community. Better ROI than any sponsored newsletter.
🎓
Bootcamps, courses & internships
Reach CS students and early-career engineers at the exact moment they're learning your stack. A captive audience before they form brand loyalties.
Early access
TermWorks is in early access. The network is growing. Early advertisers get:
- Lower CPMs before demand increases
- Direct access to us for campaign setup and optimization
- Input into targeting features we're building
- First-mover positioning with a developer audience that's never been advertised to this way