I find the proposal valuable in that it is an experiment in raising funds for a web3 project through a web2 audience. The team is creative, the products are interesting, the code and hardware are fully open-source under GPL-3, IoT market is a great target for our technologies. It was discussed in the corresponding private chat this is marketing funds for a private company/protocol. I agree. But at this price tag, I favor the proposal and I'd like to see this creative team receive the support of the community and the treasury. Clear aye.

What's the return of this invest to polkadot?

Because Robonomics is private business with a token, I don't believe this is a "common good" application of treasury funds, especially since what is being funded is headcount and activites for growth/sales. Potentially I'd be open to funding as a loan that is repaid from the proceeds of the sale.

We are unsure of the benefits this can bring to the Polkadot ecosystem.

I think the overall vision of the project is solid. There’s real potential here, and I’m excited about the broader direction. That said, the marketing plan as it currently stands is a major weak point and could seriously undermine the effectiveness of the entire proposal. The assumption of a $0.50 CPC in today’s landscape just isn’t realistic unless the traffic quality is extremely low. Most credible platforms are well above that, and anything that hits that price point is usually bot-heavy or not worth the spend. If you’re aiming for real users and engagement, the plan needs to reflect current market realities. Additionally, using a paid third-party agency to manage a sub-$1M ad budget feels very unnecessary. The current self-serve tools across Google, Meta, X, TikTok, Mantis, etc., are more than capable and often more efficient when handled in-house. Allocating funds to an agency in this case risks unnecessary overhead without clear added value. On top of that, the influencer strategy seems outdated and should be revisited. The space has evolved. What worked five years ago doesn’t necessarily work now. Instead of leaning on legacy influencer approaches, consider more community-native growth tactics or content marketing tailored to your specific audience. In short: I like the what, but the how, at least from a marketing perspective, needs a complete rethink. Happy to revisit my vote if a more modern and data-driven strategy is presented.

A couple of things to unpack in this proposal so I'll leave my comments in the discussion section.

It is not very clear to me that this proposal actually favors Polkadot as a protocol.

We are not certain with benefits for Polkadot, we might reconsider our vote later on.

We agree with Kukabi that this is a valuable experiment, but we also agree with Flez in that the marketing plan is a major weak point. We build AMAZING tech in Polkadot and nobody will ever know about it. Nay from us until marketing is taken more seriously.

This checks all the boxes for me. Open source, a dedicated team to growing their vertical, an somehow a clear path to achieving some more adoption. I'm expecting an extensive report on results achieve in terms of adoption/awareness created in the specific industry.