Avito expands promo tools to self-employed sellers

Avito said the number of agencies growing with the platform rose 91% year over year, while the number of businesses using agency teams climbed 108%. That kind of growth suggests demand is already there: self-employed sellers want help finding buyers, and agencies want more inventory to promote. By bringing physical persons into the paid promotion system, Avito is effectively turning a previously narrower sales tool into a broader commercial engine for Russia’s gig and microbusiness sector.

The economic significance is straightforward. Self-employed workers tend to have limited budgets, modest brand recognition and little time to manage marketing. If they can outsource promotion to agencies while keeping operations lean, they may be better positioned to grow revenue without adding staff. That can matter in an environment where small-business resilience is increasingly important, especially as consumers remain cautious and entrepreneurs look for cheaper ways to reach demand.

There is also a platform effect here. More promoted listings can mean more traffic, more transaction activity and potentially higher monetization for Avito itself. In marketplace businesses, the winner is often the platform that can make it easiest for sellers to be found and for agencies to do the work at scale. This update improves that workflow by letting agencies manage clients in a single interface, switch between seller profiles and platform tools, and export data via API.

For investors, the lesson is that the best online marketplaces are not just connecting buyers and sellers anymore — they are supplying the tooling around the transaction. That is where durable growth lives. If Avito can keep converting self-employed users into paid promotion customers, it deepens engagement and expands the monetization pool without needing to reinvent the core marketplace.

The broader freelance economy remains under pressure globally, with work availability uneven and regulation evolving, but tools that help small operators market themselves more efficiently should continue to gain traction. Agencies benefit from a larger addressable market, self-employed sellers gain professional support, and the platform gets a stickier business model. That makes the Avito update worth watching as a signal that the next phase of marketplace growth may come from services layered on top of listings, not from listings alone.