Martin has appeared on "Premium Blend" and had his own special on Comedy Central. His special was divided into three parts. In the first he told jokes such as: "I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year, but I used the wrong paper. See, the paper I used said 'Happy Birthday' on it. I didn't want to waste it so I just wrote 'Jesus' on it." In the second segment he used humorous drawings to aid his jokes. He would use the images either as the punchline or just as a background. For the third segment Martin played a guitar and put on a pseudo-play where he would strum his guitar while talking; some of his comedian friends dressed as fairies and dragons and such would act according to the story he was telling ("where my jokes come from"). Martin's mother and grandmother also appeared.

Demetri Martin, along with Zach Galifianakis, is one of the first people on a Comedy Central special to do the three major forms of stand-up comedy, appearing as a standup comic, a prop comic (such as The Amazing Jonathan), and as a musical comic (such as Stephen Lynch).

Recently, Martin appeared at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe in a show called These Are Jokes. Since late 2005, he has been credited as a Correspondent on The Daily Show, for a segment called "Trend Spotting." He has used this segment to talk about so-called hip trends among youth such as wine and the Xbox 360. A piece about social networking featured his profile on MySpace and "life coaching".

Also in 2005, he was featured at the intimate comedy showcase Invite Them Up and the subsequent best of CD and DVD collection.