Outdoor advertising in Moscow

A month on the rate card starts at RUB 10,000, and a typical address lands around RUB 30,000. The price sits on the card, next to the photo and the exact address, and the catalogue filters by format, district and price.

A quote is built from your list of addresses and dates, with volume taken into account; we confirm availability with the owners of the structures, and we check the artwork before it goes to print.

Advertising faces in the catalogue: 34,624. Addresses under them: 13,464. Owners: 19. Every face carries a photo and an exact address, and prices are shown right in the catalogue.

The map is the quicker way to build the list: in Moscow, where an address falls against the ring roads and the radial arterials also decides which format may stand there at all.

Formats in the catalogue: 10, and Citylights holds the most faces — 20,625 of them. What decides which format is possible at an address is not the operator but the placement zone: the city rules tie structure types to zones (decree No. 712-PP, edition of 12 December 2017).

• 6 × 3 m billboards, city boards, superboards and supersites, rooftop and one-off structures: only from the Third Ring Road out to the city limits, on the MKAD ring motorway and along the radial arterials beyond that ring.
• Those arterials are named one by one — Kutuzovsky and Leningradsky avenues, Prospekt Mira, Leninsky Prospekt, the Yaroslavskoye, Kashirskoye, Varshavskoye and Volokolamskoye highways among them.
• Any other type is barred inside a zone: a format not listed for it cannot stand there even where a site is free.

Digital surfaces: 3,812 of 34,624. Take a screen when the creative and the schedule have to change mid-campaign — for events, sales or times of day; a printed board holds the site alone for the whole term.

A media facade in Moscow is not a kind of screen but a regime of its own: it is allowed only in accordance with the register of media facade locations, a separate city document listing addresses and minimum permitted dimensions. The rules also restrict changing the image during daylight hours.

The first restriction is the zoning itself: a structure type belongs to a zone, and "placing advertising structures of any other type in those zones is not permitted" (clause 4.3.3 of the rules). In order of severity:

• in the buffer zones of the Kremlin, the Novodevichy Convent and Kolomenskoye the only outdoor advertising allowed at all is unlit playbill stands for theatres;
• on protected natural areas and around heritage sites placement is possible only if the historic urban environment is preserved, and with the city heritage department signing off;
• the Boulevard Ring, everything inside the Garden Ring and the Tverskaya zone take small format only.

The rules were approved by decree No. 712-PP; the norms above are quoted from the edition of 12 December 2017. We reconcile a central address against them while building the shortlist, before it reaches your quote.

The site is fixed by the advertising placement scheme, and the city media and advertising department approves it — but only once other agencies have signed off:

• the cultural heritage department, for heritage sites and their buffer zones;
• the architecture and urban planning committee;
• the transport department, inside transport interchange hubs and within 15 metres of stations and stops;
• the joint administrative and technical inspectorate;
• the Federal Guard Service, for motorcade routes and the places where people under state protection are present.

That last approval is why a central address can be technically suitable and still never appear in the scheme. The schemes themselves are declared open and subject to mandatory publication.