Kickbacks AI

Kickbacks AI is an ad marketplace that turns the loading spinner in VS Code into paid ad space. Developers install it as a VS Code extension (works with Claude Code and Codex). When code is loading, instead of a blank spinner, users see short ads. The developer who displays the ad gets 50% of the revenue from that impression. The platform has served over 100 million ads and paid out over $107,000 to developers.

Advertisers bid on blocks of 1,000 five-second impressions. The highest bidder gets the top spot in the bid queue. Bids start at $1 per block. Delivery speed can be set to slow (2 days), medium (6 hours), or fast (ASAP). Clicks on ads are billed at 50x the impression rate. A live preview shows exactly what the ad will look like in the terminal spinner. The market page shows current pricing and impression volume.

The tool works best for developers who want to earn passive income from their editor. It's also useful for advertisers targeting developers — the audience is captive during brief loading pauses. The setup is simple: paste a curl command into Claude to install the extension. No account creation or configuration needed beyond that. The main limitation is that it only works with VS Code and the specific Claude Code and Codex extensions.