We conducted in-depth interviews with 262 marketing professionals in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and 13 agency and brand executives. Over half of the participants hold Department Head or C-level positions. All key industries are represented: finance, telecom and IT, retail, e-commerce, FMCG, services, education, and the agency sector.
262
respondents
128 from Kazakhstan · 134 from Uzbekistan
66%
C-level, Head, and Lead positions
60%
of respondents have over 5 years
of experience in marketing
42%
of companies are medium
and large businesses
8
key industries
We conducted this quantitative survey in February 2026, gathering insights from 262 marketing experts (128 from Kazakhstan and 134 from Uzbekistan). The sample includes mid-level and senior specialists, brand and PR managers, heads of marketing, CMOs, and agency CEOs — decision-makers who manage budgets, teams, and technology.
We supplemented the quantitative findings with 13 in-depth interviews with brand and agency executives. This provided a managerial lens on these trends, allowing us to cross-check our quantitative data against the real-world experience of leaders who manage teams and budgets.
We analyzed the data using several segmentation techniques, slicing the metrics by company size, professional experience, AI usage frequency, and the intersections of these variables.
The industry breakdown spans agencies, banks and fintech, telecom and IT, retail, e-commerce, FMCG, services, education, and more. In terms of company size, respondents are split almost evenly between small, medium, and large businesses. Their professional experience ranges from entry-level to over ten years in the field.
Most respondents report increased budgets, with many companies noting significant growth. Mentions of budget cuts are less common — usually coming from mature players optimizing their expenses.
How marketing budgets changed in 2024–2025, by country
Question: “How have your company's marketing budgets changed in 2024–2025?”
How customer acquisition cost (CAC) changed, 2024–2025
Question: “How did the customer acquisition cost (CAC) change in 2025 compared to 2024?”.
In Kazakhstan, 76% of companies experienced cost increases, compared to 80% in Uzbekistan.
The other side of the budget equation is customer acquisition cost. Most respondents note that CAC has grown over the past year.
A stable or declining CAC is rare. This is natural in a growing market: advertisers compete for the same users, channels can't keep pace with ad spend, and audience attention gets pricier.
For marketing teams, this means that increasing the budget no longer guarantees a proportional boost in results. To maintain efficiency, they have to keep a tight grip on unit economics, rethink their media mix, and reallocate investments across the funnel.
The primary investment growth driver in the region is performance marketing. Over half of the respondents are investing more in it than a year ago. It is followed by content production and ad creative, influencer marketing, local platforms, Telegram, and CRM marketing. The market is gaining strength both in traffic acquisition and in content production and working with its own client base.
Share of companies that increased their channel investments year over year
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Question: “Which channels are you spending more on than last year?” Multiple choice allowed.
% of companies in the industry that increased their channel investments year over year
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Question: “Which channels are you investing in more year over year?” Multiple choice allowed.
Companies in Uzbekistan invest more often in Telegram (33% vs. 16%), while those in Kazakhstan lean toward local platforms (35% vs. 21%).
In retail and e-commerce, the main flow of investments goes into performance marketing. These are categories with a short deal cycle, where every click is linked to a specific transaction. FMCG and services lean heavily on production and ad creatives: purchasing decisions in these categories rely on brand recognition, packaging quality, and emotional response.
In banking and fintech, investments in CRM and retention are noticeably higher than in influencer marketing or Telegram. For financial companies, retaining a customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one, and the entire media logic is built around that. In telecom and agencies, investments are distributed more evenly, without a pronounced specialization.
However, increased channel investment doesn't guarantee higher returns. For certain channels, the surge in funding coincides with reports of declining efficiency.
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Performance and influencer marketing are experiencing this exact dynamic: growing investments combined with diminishing returns. Other channels — Telegram, local platforms, production, CRM — are more stable at the moment. There could be several explanations for this. Perhaps ad auction capacity is limited, resulting in diminishing marginal returns on investments. Or teams might be scaling channels without sufficiently refining their ad creatives, targeting, or analytics. Regardless, the next challenge for many players isn't just increasing their investments, but learning to scale them while preserving returns.
Amid discussions about budgets and channels, hiring turns out to be the most pressing issue for executives. Most respondents report a gap between what is expected of a marketing expert and what candidates on the market can actually do. A considerable portion of them describe this gap as significant.
Assessment of whether specialist skills match market expectations
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Question: “In your opinion, is there a gap between market expectations and specialist skills?”.
In Kazakhstan, 74% of respondents see a gap, compared to 80% in Uzbekistan.
Frequency of candidate salary expectations noticeably above the market rate
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Question: “Have you encountered candidates asking for significantly above-market rates?”
“Uzbekistan is experiencing an economic miracle. At the same time, the market is facing a severe talent shortage — there is a real battle for good specialists who understand the local market.”
Almost all employers in the region have seen candidates ask for salaries noticeably above the market rate. Half of the respondents note that hiring a marketer takes longer than it did a year ago. These are symptoms of a market where the demand for strong talent outpaces supply.
This situation becomes especially painful for specific roles.
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Three questions: “Which roles are most in-demand right now?”, “Which roles have the most severe talent shortage?”, and “Which roles are the hardest to fill?” Multiple choice allowed.
Analytics roles rank at the top across all three dimensions: demand, talent shortage, and difficulty of filling positions. This is the role facing the fiercest competition in the market. Performance marketers, marketing directors, and product marketing professionals are close behind, but across the board, it is hiring analysts that proves to be the biggest bottleneck. In a growing and increasingly complex market, the ability to work with data is becoming critical — yet developing such specialists is both difficult and time‑consuming.
Interestingly, the skills gap is distributed unevenly across companies of different sizes.
Share of companies noting a significant gap between market expectations and specialist skills
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Question: “In your opinion, is there a gap between market expectations and specialist skills?”. Showing the “Yes, a significant gap” response category.
If skills and results are what matter in the market, this is also reflected in team makeup: marketing in the region appears to be a fairly balanced environment. There are many women in entry-level and mid-management positions who handle branding and products, build processes, manage projects, and lead departments. In day-to-day operations, gender rarely plays a role — competencies and results matter more.
However, assessments diverge more sharply around the executive level. Formally, most respondents don't see a pressing issue: about 89% perceive either a balanced situation or only a slight skew. But beneath this reassuring consensus lies a clear perception gap. Women, especially those in junior and early-career positions, take a far more critical view of their representation than men do.
Assessment of factors preventing women from holding executive positions, by respondent gender
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Question: “What factors might prevent women from holding executive positions in marketing?” Multiple choice allowed.
Women are more likely to point out systemic and social barriers, while men tend to say there are no barriers: 79% of women named at least one barrier, compared to 63% of men. Among specific reasons, women are more likely than men to mention stereotypes (40% vs. 22%), the unequal distribution of family responsibilities (40% vs. 23%), and a lack of leadership support (25% vs. 10%).
Looking at how the region works with artificial intelligence, it's clear the technology has transitioned from an experiment to an everyday tool. Most marketers use AI in their daily workflows, and very few say they don't use it at all.
Frequency of AI use in a marketing expert's workflow
Share of marketers citing each task as a key time-saver
Question: “In which tasks does AI genuinely save time?” Multiple choice allowed.
The frequency of AI use varies across companies of different sizes, with the distribution closely mirroring what we saw in the skills gap.
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Question: “Do you use AI in your work?”, showing the “daily” share.
Daily AI use is most common in small and large enterprises. In the middle segment, this figure is lower. Perhaps for companies at both ends of the spectrum, AI serves as a way to compensate for a lack of internal expertise: it expands capabilities for small teams and helps large ones manage heavy workloads while their structures adapt.
Special attention should be paid to predictions about which tasks will be optimized first due to AI.
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Interestingly, daily AI users respond differently from rare users. Daily users are less likely to say that automation will leave all roles untouched and are more likely to name specific ones. Hands-on AI experience helps them see exactly which tasks it's already taking over; for occasional AI users, the picture remains more abstract.
Assessment of the lack of tech and data skills in the team
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Question: “Do you feel a lack of tech and data skills in your team?”
In Kazakhstan, 78% feel a shortage, compared to 71% in Uzbekistan.
At the same time, a significant portion of respondents note a lack of tech and data skills in their teams: everyone already has the tools, but knowing how to integrate them into processes is far less common. The next stage of AI adoption will likely not be about implementation itself, but rather the skill to build processes around it, select the right tasks, and manage output quality.
When asked what will make marketers successful over the next few years, respondents ranked several competencies almost equally: AI and automation, product understanding, a versatile profile, and deep digital expertise. Analytics follows closely.
Assessment of a marketing expert's success factors in the next 2–3 years
Question: “What will be the main success factors for a marketing expert in the next 2–3 years?” Multiple choice allowed.
The industry is divided on the future of marketing. Interestingly, this split isn't driven by geography or sector, but by years of experience in the field.
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Question: “How do you view the future of marketing in your country?” The trend of declining optimism with experience persists in both countries.
Marketing experts with limited work experience more often expect active market growth. As experience increases, optimism wanes. Among specialists with more than ten years of experience, the share expecting active growth is noticeably smaller. This pattern holds true in each of the two countries individually, meaning it's not merely a quirk of the combined data. Perhaps newcomers view the market through the lens of emerging opportunities, while seasoned professionals view it through the lens of qualitative changes. Both perspectives are grounded in the same data, but highlight different facets of it.
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Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are evolving rapidly and in several directions at once. If we bring the findings from all the chapters together, we see a market where budgets are growing, toolkits are expanding, and AI is embedded into daily workflows. However, the two markets differ in pace: Uzbekistan is growing faster and actively experimenting with channels, while Kazakhstan moves more cautiously and competes more fiercely for strong executives.
This dynamic has a flip side. The market is hitting typical growth constraints: there's a lack of expertise, customer acquisition is getting more expensive, and channel efficiency is uneven. Launching a campaign today is easier than assembling the team and processes required to make it successful.
This is why the next phase will be about managing the quality of what has already been set in motion. Marketing experts themselves are looking in this direction: the key drivers for 2026 include AI and automation, analytics and personalization, followed by product innovations and creative formats. Teams in these countries are shifting from asking “how to grow” to “how to grow more efficiently” — and while these challenges are familiar to marketers worldwide, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are tackling them at their own pace.
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