By David Topping

A TTC billboard at Queensway and Islington. Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.

Yes, the TTC has billboards all around Toronto advertising nothing other than the TTC; no, they’re not costing you a thing.
A few readers have emailed to ask about the big, simple, black, white, and red billboards with a TTC logo sandwiched between the TTC’s website and phone number. Like most others we’ve found, the billboard above, at Queensway and Islington, isn’t perched over TTC property, which has led a few Torontoist readers to ask us how much the ads are costing the TTC.
Rage not: the ads are part of the TTC’s existing advertising contract with CBS Outdoor. CBS Outdoor, if you were unfamiliar with them, supplies ads like this and this and this and this to the TTC. According to outgoing TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, “there is no cost to TTC,” since “production and media cost is covered by CBS.”
We called CBS Outdoor Director of Marketing Michele Erskine for additional information (how many of the billboards are scattered around the city, how CBS determines where to put the ads) but she told us that she couldn’t comment on any contract her company had, even when it came to things like locations of ads. Giambrone had explained earlier, though, that the billboards’ locations are entirely at CBS Outdoor’s discretion, and are “unsold space,” meaning that the TTC’s billboard ads are filling billboards that would otherwise be empty. Next time you see one, don’t wonder what it’s costing you—wonder what other ad you don’t have to see instead.