What about the developer?

Have you ever wondered about the developer experience of your advertising? If you are marketing and advertising to developers, you absolutely should. “Meet the Developer” helps you discover the person behind the code. Learn who they are, why they write about developing, and how they experience the advertising and content you are throwing at them.

I had the great pleasure of corresponding with Anupam Chugh. Anupam is a contributor to the developer-to-developer community, JournalDev. He likes to share his knowledge as well as learn from others. If you want him to click on an ad there, though, you’d better show him the code.

Here’s what Anupam had to say about himself, JournalDev, and his experiences with advertising that targets developers.

Tell us about yourself. Where do you live, work, what type of programming do you do?

My name is Anupam Chugh and my current role is of a freelance software developer. I reside in Indore, India and work remotely (one of the very few perks of being a freelancer). “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” is the motto that I follow. That’s what actually brought me into mobile application development. When I’m not building applications, I like to write about them on https://www.journaldev.com.

Why is JournalDev important to you?

JournalDev provides me the platform to share my knowledge as well as learn from others. I’ve learned a lot by publishing my articles on JournalDev. I write articles as if I’m teaching a younger me whose looking for the best material on that topic. It’s a great feeling when you know that your article helped others in their work. Sometimes, my friends and colleagues refer me to one of my articles. Later, when I tell them that it’s written by me, I get immediate appreciation, and that’s something I couldn’t have gotten without being part of JournalDev.

What is the newest tech you are using, learning, excited about, and/or curious about?

I can’t stay away from Kotlin and Swift(for Android and iOS Development respectively). Currently, I’ve immersed myself in Augmented Reality. I’ve been working a lot with ARKit and ARCore for developing iOS and Android Applications and games. AR has a lot of potential to change the way apps are perceived and used in the coming years.

Where do you go for info about developer tools?

I often read related blogs on Medium.com. Once something excites me, I’ll visit the official docs.

What ads attract you?

In scenarios where I need to disable my Ad blocker, I do notice ads related to cloud services and plugins. I love ads from Paper trail which are devoid of any buzzwords and generally have the Git Hub/code link attached.

Do you click on the ad or search the product/advertiser you see in the ad on a separate browser instance?

I like multi-tasking when I’m on the web, so I generally do both. I try out the ad’s link in a new tab whilst googling the related keywords in another tab.

How do you feel when you visit content or another site you are interested in, that was advertised to you, only to find that you have to give a phone number to get what was offered?

It’s annoying, and I generally don’t return to such sites much. I wish there were a disclaimer mentioning the user details they need before even showing us the content—something like app permissions.

In my opinion, such sites are like magnets. They attract you quickly only to repel you later on.

Same as above – except about your credit card info?

Same as above. Though, if given a chance, I’d choose to give my phone details over the credit card. 

At what point do you navigate away when you visit content you want, but encounter a lot of requests for personal information? Email? Name? Phone number? Credit card? Other?

As long as the details can be auto-filled by my browser extension, I’m happy with any number of fields. Anything that requires more than 20 seconds of my attention span will be ignored. Besides, I won’t start filling [in] any field until I’m happy to share my credit card details.

Once this happens, how do you feel about that brand or product?

I’ll remember a brand/product more when it asks for little to no information. Unless, of course, the product has something really good to offer. It’s too harsh to judge solely on the basis of the personal details they’re asking [for].

Have you ever found a technology and purchased it based on an ad run in your developer community? Why or why not?

No, I haven’t. I’d generally look for a free alternative. The open source community is huge.