Keep the posters up to date

I took this photo on January 21, 2012. So what!

The poster is part of a series of monthly posters put up on transit shelters around Vancouver showing historic events that took place in and around the city on dates in each month. But this poster, for December 2011, was still up on January 11, 2012.

The fact that this poster was still up 11 days after the end of the preceding month sends an interesting message to advertisers. It seems that CBS Decaux, the firm that manages the transit shelter posters, would rather have an out-of-date poster on display that remove the poster and have a blank space.

Continuing to display out-of-date posters does not increase the value of the display spaces. If I were an advertiser I think that I might be willing to take a chance that CBS Decauz would not sell all of their space and my posters might remain on display even after my display run was over.