Advertising Revenue is Down

Transit Authority Feeling the Pain From a Crippled Advertising Market
The worst advertising market in decades has had a devastating, and well-documented, effect on newspapers, magazines and television networks. But now another recipient of ad dollars is being hurt by the market slump at a time it can little afford it: mass transit.
In recent months, a company that sells many of the ads that appear on buses and trains and in stations in New York, Boston, Minneapolis and other cities has come up short in its payments to transit agencies, citing a sharp drop in ad rates and sales.

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Titan paid Metro Transit, which provides bus and light rail service, about $100,000 less than the required $1 million payment for the first three months of this year, according to Bruce Howard, the transit agency’s director of marketing. He said that ad sales during the period were about 20 percent below what they were the previous year.