What it pays and how big the market is
For 2025, 1,130 advertising and market research companies filed financial statements, as did 1,083 companies in the division that groups design, photography and translation with other professional activities. Together that makes more than 2,200 companies, with about 4,200 employees and sales revenue of over 3.1 billion lei. Both divisions grew by more than a hundred companies each compared with 2024.
Almost all of them are small: 96 companies out of 100 have fewer than ten employees. This is a market of studios, of teams of a few people and of professionals working alone.
Pay is above average in both divisions. At the end of 2025, average gross earnings were about 20,600 lei in advertising and market research and 19,750 in the other division, against roughly 16,400 across the economy. The tiles above show neither figure, because the page covers both divisions.
One figure deserves the attention of anyone starting out: more than one advertising company in four recorded no sales at all in 2025. The market is open, but it is unforgiving to an agency without clients from day one.
The agency registers nowhere, but answers for what it distributes
The Advertising Law has no concept of an agency. It recognises four roles: the supplier, who determines the subject of the advertisement; the producer, who gives it its final form; the distributor, who carries it to dissemination; and the disseminator, who shows it to the public. A full-service agency is, as a rule, producer and distributor at once.
This matters because liability follows the role. The supplier is liable for any false information it provided and must prove the authenticity of the advertisement. The producer is liable for infringement of copyright and of the right to one’s own image. The distributor is liable for the content it sends out for dissemination. And if the producer or the distributor cannot be identified, liability passes to the party next to them in the chain. A client can be held liable for no more than three months after the last dissemination.
A few rules that feed straight into an agency’s workflow:
- Advertising must be recognisable as advertising. Commercial advertising carries the label “Publicitate” (Advertising) or the sign “P”, and unlabelled paid content in the media is treated as misleading advertising. The rule applies to social networks too, which fall expressly within the definition of online advertising.
- No spelling mistakes. The law prohibits advertising copy that does not comply with current spelling norms, which makes proofreading a mandatory step, not a luxury.
- A person’s image and voice may be used only under a written contract with that person, and their consent can be withdrawn.
- Advertising by email and telephone requires prior express consent. For email, an unsubscribe takes effect within 72 hours.
- Materials are kept for one year after the last dissemination, by the distributor and by the disseminator.
- Products under a special regime have rules of their own. Alcohol advertising is prohibited, among other places, at sporting events, on public transport and within 200 metres of the entrances to schools and medical institutions. Advertising for financial products may not promise guaranteed returns or dividends.
The Advertising Law does not require any particular language for commercial advertising. Romanian is mandatory only for public interest messages.
Oversight belongs to the Competition Council and, for audiovisual advertising, to the Audiovisual Council.
Outdoor advertising: the town hall may not judge your advertisement
Since 2023 there has been no separate authorisation for placing advertising. A fixed device is installed either under a building permit, where the works touch the load-bearing structure of the building, or under a simple notification to the town hall in every other case.
The notification procedure is designed to favour the person filing it. The town hall must accept it even when it is incomplete, checks the identity data itself through the state systems and answers within 10 working days. The device must be mounted no later than six months after the notification. For a single device of up to four square metres, on the façade of non-residential premises on the ground floor, with its lighting switched off between 22:00 and 07:00, not even the owner’s consent is needed.
The most important rule for a billboard company: the town hall has no right to approve the content or design of the advertisement, nor to interfere with them. It decides where and how the billboard goes up, through the local outdoor advertising regulations, which set the distances and heights. What the billboard says is none of its business.
The law prohibits devices, among other places, on museums and monuments, on trees, on roundabouts, on the carriageway and on road signs. Advertising on taxis and on inter-district or international vehicles requires a contract registered with the town hall and prior approval from the Police.
From a billboard’s income, the town hall may collect only what the Tax Code provides for: the tax on advertising devices, per square metre of face, and the advertising placement tax, on the revenue earned. The second tax does not apply to advertising on television, on the internet, on radio and in the printed press, so an agency working only online does not owe it.
The agency sells only the rights it has bought in writing
This is the most common mistake in a young agency, and the bill arrives only when the client wants to register its trademark or reuse a campaign.
The Copyright Law starts from the author. For a work created by an employee in the course of their duties, the economic rights belong to the employee, and the employer may use it only within its own business. For a work made to order by a collaborator, the rights belong to the collaborator. Both rules apply only “in the absence of a contrary contractual provision” — so the contract can change them, but it has to actually do so.
And the contract has to be well drafted. The assignment must name the rights assigned, the term, the scope and the remuneration, otherwise either party may seek termination. An assignment with no term in an employment contract expires three years after delivery of the work, and the rights revert to the author. An assignment of all future works is void.
The Advertising Law closes the circle: the disseminator may ask the distributor for proof of copyright and image rights, and may refuse the advertisement without it. An agency whose chain of assignments is not in order cannot deliver.
Election polls and personal data
A polling institute works freely at all times, except during an election period. During a campaign, only legal persons engaged in research and specialised organisations registered in Moldova may conduct political polls, only with the authorisation of the Central Electoral Commission, and separately for each poll.
The Commission’s regulation excludes several categories of clients and contractors: public sector entities, companies that have had public procurement contracts or state aid in the last three years, foreign authorities and anonymous persons. Published together with the results are the client and its beneficial owner, the company that carried out the poll, the sample size, the refusal rate and the margin of error. On election day, nobody may make exit poll results public before 21:00.
Outside elections, the rule that matters is data protection. A company carrying out a study for a client is a processor and works under a contract whose content is set by law; it may not subcontract without the client’s written consent. Political opinions are special category data, the processing of which is, as a rule, prohibited. And the exemption from keeping a record of processing activities, provided for companies with fewer than 250 employees, does not apply where the processing is not occasional or concerns special category data — which is exactly the position of a polling institute.
Authorised translation: a right of the individual, not of the company
The Law on interpreters and translators in the justice sector defines the authorised translator as a natural person. A company cannot be authorised. It can only employ or contract authorised translators.
Authorisation requires a university degree in foreign languages or in law, two years of experience, knowledge of Romanian, a clean criminal record and the certification exam, which is held once a year. For rare or oriental languages and for sign language, no degree is required. The application is filed within 30 days of the exam, and the authorisation is issued within 15 days, costs 450 lei and is entered in the State Register kept by the Ministry of Justice.
The translator certifies the translation with their own signature and seal, which carry their name, the languages they are authorised for and the authorisation number, and keeps a register of all their jobs, with the fee received. For a translation agency this has a business consequence: an authorised translator who leaves takes with them the agency’s ability to work for notaries.
For an advertising agency, a billboard company or a polling institute, an SRL. An agency has no other tax option, because 73.11 and 73.12 are not on the independent entrepreneur list, and election polls may be conducted only by legal persons. Limited liability matters too, because the agency, as producer and distributor, answers for copyright and for the content of the advertising.
Since June 2026, a designer, photographer, translator or market researcher working alone also has the option of the independent entrepreneur regime: 15% of income up to 1.2 million lei a year and 35% above that, with no accounting and no tax returns. It is worth comparing against an SRL using your own figures, especially when your clients are large companies.
A design studio working on specialised high-performance computing equipment has a third option: the IT park regime, explained in the Moldova IT Park guide and checkable against your own figures with the tax calculator.
Foreign founders have only one extra thing to weigh: an agency with a foreign founder or beneficial owner may not distribute political advertising. For the rest of the market, the ownership structure makes no difference.
We handle the choice of CAEM codes, the constitutive document, filing the dossier with the Public Services Agency and opening the bank account, and we can take over the company’s accounting from the first month. What each service includes is set out on the corporate services page.
