Advertise to developers on VibeFree

VibeFree is a self-serve ad marketplace inside its own free AI apps: advertisers bid for labelled units shown in the conversation while developers code, chat and design. Any VibeFree account can open an advertiser organisation, test for free in a sandbox, and buy from one block - £1.99 for 1,000 verified views of the text loader unit. Campaigns run on the web app and the VS Code extension today, and can be bought for the mobile app and the Windows desktop app now - those impressions start when each one launches.

How a campaign is built

  • Organisation. Your company's account. Invite teammates by email as owner, admin, editor, viewer or billing, and create API keys scoped to reporting, postbacks or webhooks.
  • Campaign. A name, the category of what you advertise, optional start and end dates, even or as-fast-as-possible pacing, and up to 20 competitor domains you never want to appear beside.
  • Ad group (up to 10 per campaign). One format, the placements and surfaces it may run on, a pricing model, a bid, a number of blocks, a frequency cap and its targeting - standard, contextual, or personalised audiences.
  • Creatives (up to 10 per ad group). The copy, images, video or bundle the format asks for - see the format and specs page.

From draft to live

  • 1. Verify your domain. Every landing URL must sit on a domain your organisation has verified. If your sign-in email is at your company's domain it is verified automatically; otherwise use a DNS TXT record (polled automatically, so there is no button to press), a file or meta tag on the site, or a link emailed to someone at the domain.
  • 2. Draft. Drafts are free - up to 50 per organisation. Anything that sends a prompt into the agent - a chip, an install, a template - needs a passing dry run first, and anything paid on your own conversion data needs a passing postback test.
  • 3. Check out. Pay by card through Stripe. The money is held, not taken: Stripe authorises the card and nothing is captured yet. Account credit from an earlier refund is applied first, and a campaign paid wholly from credit has no hold at all.
  • 4. Review. A person checks every creative against the ad policy. Approval captures the payment and the campaign goes live; rejection releases the hold so nothing is charged; a request for changes keeps the hold while you fix it. If a hold lapses before review, the campaign returns to draft and you are emailed a one-click link to check out again.
  • 5. Live. The campaign serves until its blocks are delivered. Editing a creative sends the new version to review while the approved one keeps serving.

Cancelling and refunds

Cancel any campaign yourself. Before approval the card hold is released in full. Once live, serving stops at once and billing per click stops with it; views already in flight get about ten minutes to settle, and then the unspent share of what you actually paid is refunded - to your card by default, or to account credit if you choose it. A card refund the bank cannot take becomes credit automatically. Credit is only ever spent at checkout; there is no general balance to top up.

Test it first: the sandbox

  • Mock chat playground - your creatives in every slot they can fill, in the web, desktop, VS Code and mobile chrome.
  • Targeting simulator - type a sample prompt and see the labels it gets, which of your filters pass or fail, the relevance score, whether the ad would serve and the "Why this ad?" text it would show. See contextual targeting.
  • Postback and webhook testers - test click ids, a full request log with the signature check, replay, and sample verification code.
  • Dry run, validator and mock earn page - a sponsored prompt run against a template project with tools stubbed, an HTML5 bundle run in the real sandbox with its blocked requests listed, and every sponsored reward played end to end with pretend coins.
  • Live event inspector - each event a test unit sends, as it happens.

Sandbox campaigns never reach a real person, are never billed, and are deleted after 90 days of inactivity.

Reporting, postbacks and webhooks

  • Reports show daily views, clicks and spend per campaign, broken down by surface, by placement and by conversation topic. Any row under 50 views is folded into "Other", so no row ever describes a handful of people. The same report is available over an API key with the reporting scope.
  • Postbacks tell VibeFree about conversions on your own site: VibeFree adds an opaque vf_click_id to your landing URL, and your server posts it back, signed with HMAC-SHA256 in an X-VibeFree-Signature header (a GET form exists for systems that can only fire a URL). Conversions count for 30 days after the click.
  • Webhooks send you lead.created, survey.response, interview.transcript and campaign.status events, signed the same way, to an HTTPS endpoint, retried six times over about 33 hours. Conversion tracking with signed postbacks has the full request format.

What it costs

You bid per billing unit and buy whole blocks; you pay exactly your bid when you win. The text units start at £1.99 per 1,000 verified views on the loader and £12.99 at the end of a response, and each other format's minimum is shown in the ad group form. One block is the entire minimum spend - no monthly commitment and no insertion order. See developer ads with no minimum spend and the full price comparison.

Ad revenue is what keeps VibeFree free for the developers who see the ads - see how VibeFree stays ad-funded.

Start a campaign, and see how the advertiser dashboard works, or see every placement in the conversation.

Frequently asked questions

How do I advertise to developers on VibeFree?

Sign in with any VibeFree account, create an organisation, verify your domain, and build a campaign in the console: one or more ad groups, each with a format, a bid and a number of blocks, and the creatives for it. Check out by card - the money is held, not taken - and the campaign goes live once a person approves it.

How is ad inventory priced?

You bid per billing unit and buy whole blocks. The text units are priced per 1,000 verified views, from £1.99 a block on the loader and £12.99 at the end of a response; other formats are sold per click, per completed video view, per engagement, per completion, per respondent-minute or per day, each with its own minimum. Minimums move with demand and are shown as you build.

What is the minimum spend to advertise to developers?

One block. The cheapest is 1,000 verified views of the text loader unit, £1.99. There is no monthly minimum, no insertion order, and no sales call, where developer ad networks commonly ask for $1,000 or more up front.

Can I cancel a live campaign?

Yes, yourself, from the console. Serving stops at once, and once the last in-flight views have settled - about ten minutes - the unspent share of what you paid goes back to your card, or to account credit if you prefer. A campaign cancelled before approval has its card hold released in full.

Can I test before I pay?

Yes. The sandbox is free from sign-up: preview your creatives in a mock chat on every app, run the targeting simulator against a sample prompt, fire test postbacks and webhooks, and watch the events a test unit sends. Sandbox campaigns never serve to real people and are never billed.

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