Outdoor advertising in Karaganda

Advertising faces in the Karaganda catalogue: 5. Addresses under them: 5. Owners: 2. Every face carries an exact address, plus a photo and a rate-card price where the owner has published them, and we confirm availability with the owners of the structures. There is no city register to check the list against — Kazakhstan keeps no approved scheme of sites, so the catalogue is built from the owners themselves.

The catalogue offers 2 formats, and Non-standard formats holds the most faces: 3 of them. Kazakh regulation sorts structures by the area of a face and the way it displays rather than by format name, and article 655 of the Tax Code lists them exactly that way:

• board advertising in area bands: up to 2 m², 2–5, 5–10, 10–20 m² and on to "over 70 m²";
• city-format lightboxes;
• video displays under and over 20 m², and running-text displays;
• illuminated rooftop panels and neon lettering;
• awnings, marquees, umbrellas, flags and street furniture;
• temporary kiosks and portable mobile advertising.

Street furniture carries an extra condition: advertising goes on it only where the furniture itself was installed by the local executive body or by an investor under a contract won at open tender.

Digital surfaces in the catalogue: 5 out of 5. Take a screen when the creative and the schedule have to change mid-campaign; take a printed surface when one creative for the whole paid term matters more.

One local rule applies to screens here. Under the Karaganda oblast improvement rules, advertising is switched on and off on the schedule of the street lighting, so the city sets the illuminated hours rather than the owner of the structure. The state fee has its own line too: a video display of up to 20 m² costs 14 MCI a month per face, and 24 MCI above that.

A Kazakh version is mandatory and a Russian one optional, not the other way round: the advertising law requires advertising to run in the state language and leaves the rest to the advertiser. The language law fixes the layout too: Kazakh on the left or on top, Russian on the right or below, in letters of the same size, with a trademark protected in Kazakhstan left unchanged.

The requirement returns inside the procedure: the placement notice carries a description of the advertising in Kazakh and in Russian, with sketches. Article 455 of the administrative code sets the fine at 20 MCI for an individual, rising to 400 MCI for a large business. We review the creative before it goes to print.

Kazakhstan issues no installation permit: the regime runs on notice. The notice goes to the local executive body of the city at least five working days before the intended date; reasoned comments have to be cleared first, and four working days of silence let the structure go up on the dates declared. The rules were adopted by the oblast rather than the city — Karaganda oblast maslikhat decision No. 467 of 28 November 2019, whose clause 16 sends the notice to the body of a city of oblast significance.

The placement itself runs on a contract with the owner of the structure, and a dismantling has to be reported to the same body in writing, or the structure stays on the taxpayer register.

There is no blanket ban on the centre here: the limits are specific, and the oblast rules set them out.

• no advertising on monuments of history and culture or within their protection zones, on religious buildings, the grounds assigned to them or their fences, or in protected natural areas;
• land for a structure comes from public-use land, but pavements and cycle lanes are excluded;
• a plot in a road right of way is granted only where the road will not lose its transport and operating qualities;
• advertising must not obstruct pedestrians or the mechanised cleaning of streets;
• playbills and notices may be pasted up only on boards and advertising columns installed for the purpose.

The city holds 34 objects of historical and cultural heritage, and no object-by-object list with addresses appears in any of these documents, so we establish the protection zone around a particular point before we quote it.

Yes, and it is the simplest case in the oblast: advertising on vehicles is placed with no notice filed and no placement fee charged, while liveries that merely identify a vehicle or a piece of service equipment are not treated as outdoor advertising at all. The mass carrier here is the bus: the master plan in force puts bus lines at 287.7 km in the base year and 420.7 km by 2040, and that is the one network tying the scattered parts of the city together.