A new five-year contract between Urban Outdoor Trans Ad and the Toronto Transit Commission means a new look for the city’s bus and subway advertising.

Ron Hutchinson, president of Trans Ad, says, beginning next year, advertising on subway walls and between the tracks at subway stations will eventually become a standard four feet wide and six feet high, the same size as transit shelter posters.

Hutchinson says, at the moment, ad sizes vary, with the majority of spaces a little more than five feet wide by four feet high, and some measuring 12 feet long by six feet high.

Transit cards inside buses and subway cars will stay the same size.

Hutchinson says the size changes will help advertisers better understand just what they are buying.

As well as the changes in the subway, buses are in for a new look.

Hutchinson says ad panels on the driver side of ttc buses will get larger, moving up to 30 inches wide and 192 inches long from 39 inches wide and 139 inches long.

He says panels on the other side of the vehicles will stay the smaller size.

Also, he says, the back panels on buses are due for some changes.

Hutchinson says the changes will cost Trans Ad $1.5 million, adding, at the end of the five-year contract, the ttc will assume ownership of the advertising signs.

He says, starting next year, a maximum of 10 of the ttc’s 550 buses will be fully decorated in advertising instead of the system’s regular red and silver livery.

But, he says, the buses will not be painted, but will be decorated in pressure-sensitive vinyl that incorporates a new technology allowing windows to be covered.

Pedestrians and drivers see the advertising over the windows, but bus passengers can still look out the window as if nothing is there.

Some taxis in Toronto and other cities are already decorated with this kind of vinyl.

Hutchinson says the Trans Ad deal guarantees the ttc a minimum payment over the life of the contract, as well as offering revenue sharing options.

He says the ttc’s take over five years, if all goals are met, should be $38 million.

Trans Ad held the ttc advertising contract before its recent renewal.

It has also just renewed its contracts with transit systems in Mississauga and London, both in Ontario, and has other transit contracts in such Ontario cities as Hamilton, Kingston, Windsor, Niagara Falls, and elsewhere.

Toronto’s Slaight Communications owns Trans Ad.

Slaight also has many other communications interests, including top Toronto radio station cfrb-am.