Outdoor advertising in Atyrau

Faces in the catalogue: 18. Addresses under them: 18. Owners: 1. Every face carries an exact address, plus a photo and a rate-card price where the owner has published them.

Under the oblast rules a placement rests on a contract with the owner of the structure or with whoever holds other rights in rem over it, and placing anything without a notice to the akimat is prohibited. We confirm availability with the owners before the estimate goes out.

Formats in the catalogue: 2. The format with the most faces is Billboards, holding 13. The oblast rules define a medium broadly — "volumetric or flat constructions, including screens and electronic displays" — and exclude from outdoor advertising:

• a signboard and opening hours;
• posters for cultural and sporting events;
• fuel types and prices with the seller logo at a filling station entrance;
• exchange rates within the entrance of a bureau de change;
• a shop window dressed from the inside.

Street furniture works differently: advertising on shelters, information panels, pavilions, benches and bins is allowed only if the furniture was installed by the akimat, or by an investor under a contract awarded through an open tender.

Kazakhstan issues no installation permit: the regime works on notice, and no placement scheme for structures exists. The notice is filed at least five working days before the intended date, and if the akimat stays silent for four working days the advertising goes up on the dates declared. Written reasoned remarks must be acted on first.

The city has no advertising act of its own: what applies are the oblast rules, Atyrau oblast maslikhat decision No. 345-VI of 16 July 2019. Attached to the notice are the place and period of placement, proof of payment for the first month, and a description of the advertising with sketches in Kazakh and Russian.

The oblast rules close monuments of history and culture with their protection zones, religious buildings with their grounds and fences, and specially protected natural areas. The city holds one monument of republican significance: the Oil Workers Residential Town in Zhilgorodok — four apartment buildings, a water tower and the Kurmangazy palace of culture on M. Auezov, Volgogradskaya and Sauyrgaliyev streets.

The zone boundaries are unpublished: the general plan leaves them to later design stages, so the city department of architecture is the one to confirm an address there, and we ask them while shortlisting. Land for a structure comes from public-use land, pavements and cycle lanes excepted.

A Kazakh version is mandatory, and English is allowed beside it. The law on advertising requires advertising in Kazakh and leaves Russian and other languages to the advertiser, provided the translation does not distort the meaning. The law on languages fixes the layout too: the state language left or on top, Russian right or below, in letters of the same size; other languages may be added, in type no larger.

Neither act grants a special regime to oil or international companies, while a trademark protected in Kazakhstan "is reproduced unchanged" — a brand keeps its wordmark. Breaching them costs up to 400 MCI (monthly calculation indices) — the unit Kazakh law uses in place of fixed sums.

Digital surfaces in the catalogue: 18 of 18. Take a screen when the creative has to change mid-campaign; take a printed face when one creative for the whole term matters more.

The oblast rules make no legal difference between the two: screens and electronic displays are named as the same advertising object, and the notice is identical. The difference is the schedule — architectural lighting and advertising are switched on and off on the operating schedule of the city street lighting, so a night showing ends when that does.

Business: of the 187,174 guests the accommodation places of the Atyrau oblast received in 2025, business and professional travel accounted for 94,252 residents and 14,542 non-residents, personal reasons for 72,004 and 6,376. The Bureau of National Statistics publishes no city breakdown for this indicator, so the figures are oblast ones.

The room stock of the oblast is lightly loaded: 13.0 per cent by bed places and 15.5 per cent by rooms, against 26.4 and 33.4 per cent nationally, with an average bed-night of 13,135 tenge against 15,183 across the country.