News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
 10K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
 42K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
 6.1K     0 

Crosslinx has been doing inspections on the line for the past couple of days.

Dan
This being part of the substantial completion process. Not seeing any vehicles on the line isn't surprising. When ION in KW finished their revenue service demonstration there were no trains running until after Substantial Completion and the line opening (which happened to both occur on the same day!).
 
What advertisers? Nobody advertises on the TTC anymore.
Whatever happened to pricing advertising space at "what the market will bear"? If half the advertising space is empty, the TTC should cut ad prices until they fill all their spaces again. Reduce by 50% if need be. Or more if need be.
Aside from printing costs (let's assume those are separated), the only expense to the TTC is hiring someone to rotate/replace posters now and then. The space where a poster could be, is still there, whether it's holding a poster or not.
Perhaps an economics major can explain this to me.
 
Whatever happened to pricing advertising space at "what the market will bear"? If half the advertising space is empty, the TTC should cut ad prices until they fill all their spaces again. Reduce by 50% if need be. Or more if need be.
Aside from printing costs (let's assume those are separated), the only expense to the TTC is hiring someone to rotate/replace posters now and then. The space where a poster could be, is still there, whether it's holding a poster or not.
Perhaps an economics major can explain this to me.
What's happened to transit advertising is the same thing that has happened to billboards and periodical advertising (in newspapers and magazines): over the last 20 years, marketers have shifted to online channels which offer much more targeted ads that are more effective at motivating action. In Canada, about 2/3rds of all ad spending goes into online advertising of one sort or another.

Ads on transit vehicles are at an especial disadvantage here, since that poster will be travelling all over the city more or less at random, and as the buyer, you have have no efficient way of reinforcing your messaging short of plastering the whole system with your ads. (Whereas, if you buy a poster in a subway station, you're targeting a specific geographic area, and most passengers are gonna walk by the exact same ad twice a day for the length of your campaign.)

Transit advertising has also taken an especial hit off the back of the pandemic. Fewer passengers means fewer eyeballs, which means lower rates and fewer buyers.

As for fixing this problem by lowering ad rates, I'm not sure that'll work: the businesses you would attract by making transit ads cheaper are often going to be the small, local businesses that are least interested in advertising in the terms I've described. If I run a dental office at Yonge and Sheppard, given the choice between having a single poster at platform level at Sheppard-Yonge Station, and having 20 posters on random subway trains, I would much rather have the platform poster. Even if the 20 subway posters work out much, much cheaper.
 
Last edited:
Sorry to disappoint the narrative here but advertising revenue doesn’t seem to be in the dumpster. I took a quick look over a few minutes doing ctrl+f for advertising revenue in the annual reports and here's a sampling. I adjusted past years values to 2024 dollars. Looks like decent recovery after the hit the TTC took from covid.

2010: $36.6m
2019: $33.6m
2020: $27.0m
2021: $15.4m
2024: $31.9m

From annual reports: https://www.ttc.ca/transparency-and-accountability/Annual-Reports
and this board item for 2024: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/ttc/bgrd/backgroundfile-256391.pdf
 
Sorry to disappoint the narrative here but advertising revenue doesn’t seem to be in the dumpster. I took a quick look over a few minutes doing ctrl+f for advertising revenue in the annual reports and here's a sampling. I adjusted past years values to 2024 dollars. Looks like decent recovery after the hit the TTC took from covid.

2010: $36.6m
2019: $33.6m
2020: $27.0m
2021: $15.4m
2024: $31.9m

From annual reports: https://www.ttc.ca/transparency-and-accountability/Annual-Reports
and this board item for 2024: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/ttc/bgrd/backgroundfile-256391.pdf
Indeed. Obviously slipped a bit over the years (with accounting for inflation). But nothing like some would have you believe.

I wonder how much that new animated tunnel wall advertising will reap - https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tt...cle_259356c5-bcf3-40d0-a7f5-ef4d11a9c098.html
 

Back
Top