Outdoor advertising in Aktobe

Advertising faces in the catalogue: 33. Addresses under them: 24. Owners: 2. Every face comes with an exact address, plus a photo and a rate-card price where the owner has published them, and we confirm the availability of the addresses you pick with the owners of the structures.

Formats in the catalogue: 3. The format with the most faces is Citylights, with 18 of them. Kazakh regulation itself sorts structures by area and type rather than by format name: the Tax Code fee table gives its own line to:

• units under 2 m² and city-format lightboxes;
• boards by area — 2 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 20 m² and on up to "over 70 m²";
• illuminated rooftop installations under and over 30 m²;
• video images under and over 20 m², and running-text displays;
• street furniture, flags and awnings, temporary kiosks, portable mobile advertising.

Street furniture is a case apart: oblast rules No. 482 allow advertising on shelters, pavilions, benches and bins only where the furniture itself was installed by the local executive body, or by an investor under a contract with it awarded through an open tender.

Digital faces in the catalogue: 33 out of 33. Take a screen when the creative and the schedule have to change mid-campaign; take a printed face when one creative for the whole term matters more.

The state fee affects the choice too: a screen has its own line in the Tax Code — a video image up to 20 m² costs 14 MCI a month per face, above 20 m² it is 24 MCI, and a running-text display 2 MCI. A screen is priced by that line rather than by the area band a printed board falls into.

Kazakhstan issues no installation permit and keeps no placement scheme: a placement rests on a contract with the owner of the structure plus a notice filed with the city executive body at least five working days before the intended date. Three things go with the notice:

• a form stating the period and the site;
• proof that the first month fee has been paid;
• a free-form description of the advertising in Kazakh and Russian, with sketches.

Silence counts as consent: no answer within four working days and the structure may go up on the dates declared; if comments come, they must be dealt with first. The procedure is set by an oblast act rather than a city one — Aktobe has none of its own, and what applies are the rules approved by Aktyubinsk oblast maslikhat decision No. 482 of 11 December 2019. Where no notice was filed, the state fee is charged at double the rate.

A Kazakh version is mandatory and the Russian one is up to the advertiser: that is how the advertising law puts it, and a translation may not distort the meaning. The language law fixes the layout too — the state language on the left or on top, Russian on the right or below, in letters of the same size.

The administrative code sets the fine: breaching the language requirements costs 20 MCI for an individual, 100 MCI for a small business and 400 MCI for a large one, rising to 650 MCI for a repeat within the year. A trademark protected in Kazakhstan is reproduced unchanged, so a Latin-script brand logo stays as it is.

The advertising law, echoed by clause 12 of oblast rules No. 482, closes several places outright:

• monuments of history and culture and their protection zones;
• religious buildings and the grounds and fences assigned to them;
• specially protected natural areas;
• the surface of the roadway, pavements, footpaths and cycle lanes, boarding areas and stops;
• pavements and cycle lanes as ground — land for a structure comes from public-use land, but not from those.

Advertising with sound in the open air is banned. A structure must not resemble a road sign, obscure one or dazzle drivers, and once the contracted term ends, or on an order from the local executive body, it is dismantled within thirty calendar days.