In the first half of 2026, Kazakhstan’s advertising market grew 10.3% to KZT 65.9 billion. Online advertising rose 15%, and outdoor advertising 17%.
On the face of it, advertising businesses should be doing well.
Yet over the same period, advertising agencies’ service volumes fell 27.3%. Average industry wages dropped 18.5%, or 26.2% after inflation.
The picture is puzzling: advertising is more visible and advertisers spend more, while agencies and their employees earn less.
Where is the money going?
The Market Grew 10% — and Barely Grew at All
According to the Central Asian Advertising Association’s estimate, spending on television, online, outdoor, radio and print advertising rose from KZT 60 billion to KZT 65.9 billion in the first six months of 2026.
Online advertising already accounts for around 53% of this market, or KZT 34.93 billion. Outdoor advertising reached KZT 12.79 billion.
Radio, meanwhile, fell 24% and print publications around 15%.
Another detail matters: advertising-market growth of 10.3% exactly matched inflation over the period.
The market became larger in monetary terms, but barely grew in real terms.
Advertising has nevertheless become more noticeable. Digital screens replace conventional billboards, brands make more short videos, bloggers publish daily integrations and online shops show personalised ads.
Advertising contacts are growing faster than budgets.
Agencies Lost More Than KZT 80 Billion
The Bureau of National Statistics presents a much gloomier picture.
Advertising and market-research services totalled KZT 264.8 billion in the first half of 2026, down from KZT 347.6 billion a year earlier.
That is a fall of 23.8%, or KZT 82.8 billion.
Advertising agencies absorbed almost the entire decline. Their service volumes fell from KZT 295 billion to KZT 214.4 billion, a difference of KZT 80.5 billion.
Media-placement services declined much less, by 5.8%. Market and public-opinion research fell 2.8%.
Industry employment also contracted. Payroll headcount declined 7.3% to around 1,800 people.
Average second-quarter pay was KZT 476,100, compared with KZT 584,000 a year earlier. The nominal decline was 18.5%, and the real decline 26.2%.
These figures have a significant limitation: wage statistics exclude small enterprises engaged in entrepreneurial activity. They cannot therefore be applied to all marketers, designers, advertising specialists and social-media managers.
Two Statistics Measure Different Markets
The association’s figures and official statistics do not contradict one another. They measure different things.
The association estimates advertising-placement spending in five main channels: television, online, outdoor, radio and print.
Official statistics measure a wider range of services, including agency work, media placement, market research and related activities.
The first dataset asks how much money was spent showing advertisements.
The second asks what volume of services advertising-industry companies provided.
An advertiser can increase spending on Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, bloggers or marketplaces while cutting strategy, creative work, production and agency support.
The advertisement will appear, but the agency will receive less.
Money Moves From Companies to Sole Proprietors and Individual Specialists
One of the clearest shifts appears in sole-proprietor statistics.
Sole proprietors provided KZT 60.6 billion in advertising and research services in the first half of 2026, up 43.1% year on year.
Their share rose from 12.2% to 22.9%.
Small enterprises’ service volumes fell 34.6% to KZT 185.4 billion. Medium-sized companies lost 19.4%.
This may indicate orders moving from full-service agencies to small teams, freelancers and individual specialists.
A business does not necessarily need a ten-person agency. It can commission design, advertising setup, video production and blogger collaborations separately.
That arrangement is often cheaper for clients. For the market, it fragments budgets among hundreds of small providers.
Social Media and Bloggers Take a Growing Share
The agency-served online advertising market reached KZT 75.4 billion in 2025. Within digital, however, money was distributed unevenly.
According to association data, social media’s share rose from 32.5% to 39.3%. Blogger advertising budgets grew 45.7%, taking their share from 4% to 5.4%.
Retail media, advertising within marketplaces, delivery services and shopping apps, grew 58.3%.
Money is moving into Kaspi, Magnum, Glovo, Wolt, Yandex Eda and other ecosystems where advertisements can be linked directly to purchases.
Paid search budgets, meanwhile, fell 28.3%. Their share of online advertising declined from 17.7% to 11.7%.
Advertisers gravitate towards channels where the distance between an advertisement and payment is shortest.
Some Budgets Bypass Agencies Entirely
The association’s online-advertising estimate covers the agency-served market. It excludes overseas advertisers targeting Kazakhstani users through global platforms.
Some direct placements by Kazakhstani businesses may also bypass conventional agencies.
An entrepreneur can open an advertising account, upload a video, select an audience and launch a campaign. A company can negotiate directly with a blogger or hire an advertising specialist for a project.
The money is spent and users see the advertisement, but the transaction may never appear in an agency’s turnover.
That is why visible advertising activity can grow faster than traditional intermediaries’ income.
Marketing Moves In-House
Internal teams are another possible destination for advertising money.
Banks, marketplaces, developers, retailers and technology companies are creating their own marketing, content, design and analytics departments.
If a bank hires a videographer, designer and social-media specialist, their wages appear in financial-sector statistics rather than advertising-industry figures.
The company continues producing advertisements while an outside agency loses part of the order.
Large businesses rarely abandon contractors completely. But everyday content, social media, analytics, rapid campaigns and adaptation remain inside the company.
Agencies receive individual major projects, strategy work, TV commercials, research or complex integrations.
AI Increases Advertising Volume Without Increasing Budgets
AI also affects the market’s economics, although not necessarily through mass advertising-industry layoffs.
The main change is a lower cost per advertising asset.
Producing ten banner versions previously required separate copywriting, layouts and size adaptations. A small team using AI can now produce dozens in the same time, test hypotheses and launch personalised advertisements for different audiences.
The number of advertisements rises while production spending may fall.
This is a global trend. In an IAB study of more than 500 advertising-industry representatives, only 30% of companies said they had fully integrated AI into campaign creation and management. Half of the remainder planned to do so by 2026.
Agencies are concerned less about direct staff replacement than about brands bringing AI tools in-house and becoming less dependent on contractors.
Kazakhstan does not yet have precise data on AI’s effect on advertising employment. It cannot therefore be said that AI caused the wage collapse.
It does, however, allow smaller teams to produce more content.
Agencies Are Not Disappearing — the Old Model Is
An agency once earned at every stage: developing an idea, filming a video, adapting layouts, buying media and preparing a report.
That chain is now breaking apart.
Media is bought directly from platforms. A blogger or smartphone videographer makes the video. An in-house designer uses AI for banners. The advertising account gathers analytics. Freelancers handle individual tasks.
In this system, an agency is no longer an obligatory intermediary.
It remains useful. Businesses still need strategy, strong ideas, research, reputation management, complex campaigns and independent effectiveness assessments.
The difficulty lies with agencies mainly selling content production and technical ad placement. These services are easiest to move in-house, assign to freelancers or accelerate with AI.
So Where Is the Money Going?
It is changing destinations rather than disappearing.
Global platforms take some. Marketplaces and retail ecosystems take another share. Bloggers, freelancers and sole proprietors receive some, while the rest stays inside companies building their own marketing teams.
AI makes advertising production cheaper and increases the content that can be produced for each tenge.
There really is more advertising around us. That no longer means traditional agencies will automatically earn more.
Are you working directly with specialists and bloggers more often, or still outsourcing marketing to an agency?
