Kovio's humanoid debuts in New York City
How Kovio put its own newest humanoid on the plaza outside Madison Square Garden for two hours, no client, just the platform proving itself on its own street.
Kovio is the open ad platform for autonomous robots with screens. Every client campaign runs on the same perception stack: onboard LiDAR and depth vision counting real humans, not modeled foot traffic. For its New York debut, Kovio put itself on the chest screen instead of a client, the same measurement, aimed at itself.
Kovio brought its newest humanoid into Midtown Manhattan, working the plaza outside Madison Square Garden for two hours. No media buying, no creative hand off, just the robot, the street, and the sensors recording everything that happened.
Measured by the robot itself.
Every number below was detected live by the Kovio SDK running on the robot, fusing its 3D depth camera and LiDAR. Verified humans in physical proximity, streamed straight to the campaign dashboard, not modeled foot traffic estimates.
Nobody scrolls past a robot.
The average display ad earns a 0.46% click rate, and most of the open web performs far worse, 0.05 to 0.08% for programmatic. Consumers have trained themselves to not see banners. Nobody has trained themselves to ignore a humanoid robot working the plaza outside Madison Square Garden.
Out of home already wins on attention. Nielsen research puts OOH brand recall at 47% versus 35% for digital media. A robot inherits that recall advantage, then adds three things a billboard will never have: it moves to where the audience is, it counts every real impression with its own sensors, and it gets filmed. Every person who posted the robot extended this campaign into feeds Kovio never paid for.
Eighty two people took out their phones to capture the robot, unprompted, and 49 walked up and touched it. That is earned media compounding on top of paid media, and it is unique to this format. A billboard has never gone viral for existing.
- A live activation outside Madison Square Garden, in foot traffic 30% heavier than Union Square
- Sensor verified metrics in a real time dashboard
- Campaign video and social ready footage
- Proof the platform works, recorded by the same sensors every client campaign runs on
Your brand could be next.
Kovio is the advertising exchange for commercial robots, with humanoids live across the USA and 1,000+ robots onboarded through partners like Robot.com. One creative file gets your brand on the fleet.
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