Local platforms in Kazakhstan: where to advertise and what it costs

The owner of a phone repair shop in Almaty has already launched search ads on Google, and now everyone is telling him to do everything at once: "buy ads on 2GIS", "list on OLX", "get a post in the district channel". He asks how much it costs. "It depends" will not satisfy him, and rightly so: 2GIS has an open price list, OLX and Kolesa only show the price when you order, and in a Telegram channel the admin sets it.

What follows, platform by platform: who it suits, where to get the price and what you need to start. Platform prices come from their own pages in October 2026; the shop's log and its sums are invented for the example.

2GIS: a free listing and paid packages

2GIS matters to any business that customers visit at an address: service shops, salons, clinics, cafes. You start with the listing, and it is free. In the 2GIS business account a company representative edits the address, opening hours and categories, uploads photos and replies to reviews.

Open the listing on a phone the way a customer will see it. Does the pin on the map match the entrance, is it clear which side to go in and which floor the shop is on, are the holiday hours right? Someone who built a route and ran into a locked door looks like interest in the statistics, but never reaches the till.

Paid 2GIS packages put advertising into the search results themselves: the 2GIS price list includes an "ad in search results" and paid category priority. Google works differently: search ads can also appear on Maps, but Google does not raise a company's place in regular local search results, either for money or for free.

2GIS publishes its prices as a price list for each city. The Almaty price list, in force from 1 October 2026, gives monthly amounts per branch, including VAT:

• Mediakartochka (media card) - 33,060 ₸: a logo on the map and a branded profile (logo, action button, header colour or background).
• Lite Media - from 51,968 to 124,723.20 ₸: on top of the branding you get an ad in search results, an ad link and stories in the listing, and a logo in the search marker.

The Lite Media price depends on a price group, and the group is set by the company's category. If a company sits in several categories, the most expensive one counts. A 2GIS sales manager will tell you which group your category is in and how long the contract runs: phone numbers by city are on the 2GIS advertising page. To start you need a business account, a complete listing and a contract.

OLX: a listing in Services and paid promotion

OLX suits independent technicians and service businesses that take orders by phone, and anyone selling goods. In the Services section you can post one listing for free; for more you buy a listing package, priced separately for each category.

For promotion OLX offers TOP listing, VIP listing and Bump, sold separately or in the Easy Start, Quick Sale and Turbo Sale bundles. OLX does not publish a price list for promotion: the cost of the services depends on the city, the category and the payment method, and the order page shows the exact amount. To find out, publish a listing and click Promote in your profile: you will see the price before you pay. To start you need an account, a listing in the right category with photos and a phone number someone will answer.

Krisha and Kolesa: property and cars

Krisha is the platform for agencies, realtors, developers and landlords. Kolesa is for people selling cars and parts, and for car service shops, which have their own Repair and services section there. Neither fits a phone repair shop, but they still go into the platform table marked "not our niche": the client will see that you considered them.

Neither has fixed promotion prices. The Krisha help centre says the system sets the rates, and prices move with demand, population, listing details, market conditions and season. Only the Srochno torg (urgent sale) badge has a fixed price: 90 ₸. Professionals and companies go through identity verification.

The Kolesa rules say the same: the cost of services is shown on the site and depends on the category, region and other listing details. They also state that the Pro and Dealer professional accounts get zero free listings in the Cars section, so every listing is paid. On both platforms you see the promotion price when you attach a service to your listing.

Banners on both platforms are sold by Kolesa Group. The price list is on the Krisha advertisers page, the prices exclude VAT, and Kolesa Group states up front that the list is not an offer and that the sales team quotes the current price.

Telegram: posts in city channels and Telegram Ads

A paid post in a channel

A sponsored post in someone else's channel is bought from the admin directly. There is no general price list: you get a price when you write. Ask everything that will affect your decision in one go:

• how much a post costs and in what format: text, photo, video, a button with a link;
• when it goes out, how many hours it stays the latest post in the feed and when it can be deleted;
• a screen recording of the channel statistics for the month (a screenshot is easy to fake): it shows views per post, where new subscribers came from and what languages people read in;
• two or three past sponsored posts and how many views they got.

The subscriber count does not tell you how many people will see the post. Each post has a view counter, and Telegram warns that it is approximate and includes forwards. Take the last 10 to 15 regular posts, leaving out ads and pinned posts, and work out the average views. Cost per thousand views (CPM) is the price of the post divided by the average views, times 1,000.

That is how you compare channels. Say two district channels quote the same price, but posts in the first get around 12,000 views and in the second around 3,000. Then a thousand views in the second channel cost four times as much, even if it has more subscribers. The rest of buying in channels, and Telegram Ads itself, is on the page about Telegram advertising.

Telegram Ads

The official Telegram Ads platform shows sponsored messages in public channels with 1,000 or more subscribers, and you choose the channels yourself. The link in the ad can only lead to a Telegram channel or bot; external sites are not allowed. The minimum CPM is 0.1 Gram (the name of Toncoin since 15 June 2026; the ad account guide still uses the old name), the text is up to 160 characters, and you pay in cryptocurrency. A shop with no channel or bot of its own has nowhere to send people from here. To start you need a Telegram account, a channel or bot and a funded balance.

Kaspi: product ads in the Kaspi marketplace

Kaspi is only worth considering if you sell goods in the marketplace on Kaspi.kz. Product ads lift your products into the top positions, for example on the app's home screen, and you pay only for clicks, when a shopper opens the product page. You launch them in Kaspi Pay, in the Marketing service: the bid is at least 3 ₸ per click for each category, and the daily budget at least 1,000 ₸. The ads show only in cities where the product is in stock or where Kaspi Delivery can ship it. The shop would only end up here if it started selling accessories as a marketplace seller.

The shop's platform map

Here is what the shop ended up with. Prices checked in October 2026.

For the first month the shop took Mediakartochka for 33,060 ₸, a free listing on OLX and one post in a district channel. Lite Media is on hold until the 2GIS manager names the price group.

How to tell which platform brings people in

The platforms' own dashboards count actions inside the platform: views, clicks, subscriptions, routes built. A conversation, a visit and a finished repair are separate events. One person can build a route, call and come in: three actions, one customer. So the numbers from the ad accounts are not added up into a customer count.

You mark the source where the person gets in touch:

• Links to the website carry UTM tags. For a paid post in someone else's channel that is utm_source=telegram and utm_medium=paid, with the same campaign name as in the other channels in utm_campaign, following the tagging rules, for example port_repair, and the channel name in Latin letters in utm_content.
• For WhatsApp, each platform gets its own click to chat link with a pre-filled first message. The manager sees which platform the person came from before even replying.
• People who walk in or call are asked where they heard about the shop, and the answer is recorded as the customer's answer. "Don't remember" in the log is better than made-up certainty.

After a month the shop's log has 46 enquiries: 23 from 2GIS, 9 from OLX, 6 from the channel, and 8 people who do not remember. Mediakartochka cost 33,060 ₸, which works out at about 1,437 ₸ per enquiry from 2GIS. But the listing existed before the package, and one month cannot tell you how many of those 23 people would have come without the logo on the map. For the channel post, the calculation works the same way: the price of the post divided by the enquiries from its link.

Exercise: a platform map for your niche

• List the platforms: 2GIS, OLX, Krisha, Kolesa, city Telegram channels, Telegram Ads, Kaspi. Mark whether each one suits your niche, with one sentence saying why.
• For the ones that fit, add a price benchmark with a link to the platform's own page and the month you checked. If the platform does not publish a price, say so and note where to get it: the order page, a sales manager, the channel admin.
• Add what you need to start: account, listing, contract, channel, budget.
• Message the admins of two city channels, get a post price and work out the CPM from the average views of their recent posts.
• Decide how you will know where a customer came from: tagged links, WhatsApp text, asking "where did you hear about us".

The exercise is done when every platform in the table has a price benchmark and what is needed to start.

The main risk in a table like this is prices taken from articles and chats. The 2GIS price list changes, and the file name carries the month and year, so write the date you checked next to the price. If you have a figure for OLX or Kolesa from someone else's post, replace it with "price on the order page" and go through adding the service yourself at least as far as the payment step. Compare channels by CPM, not by subscribers: a channel with a big audience and few views costs more per real reader.

Video: working with map listings

The video, in Russian, covers promoting a company on 2GIS. Check prices and package contents against the current price list.