It's the outdoor equivalent of telemarketing.

Need your roof done? How about a mover, or a divorce, or both? Maybe you need some posters put up everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Stop signs, mailboxes, parking meters, hoarding, light poles, newspaper boxes, sidewalks, phone booths, walls, doors, cats, cars, those weird boxes that control stoplights, pretty much anything that stays still long enough to get something slapped on it.

Toronto is part of a democracy, and democracies have things like freedom of speech, and in a democracy people, and corporate entities have rights. But don't you think that postering and stickering have gotten a tad out of hand? It's not guerilla, it's not unique, it's not new. It's ugly, it's a waste of resources and it's as visually irritating as a mistimed strobe light.

Everyone has a right to advertise. They don't have a right to blight the landscape just to make a buck. This isn't keeping thousands employed, it's not serving the public good and it makes the city look like it doesn't really care who does what on public property.

Here's an interesting article about the law in Toronto and how it's not enforced. And here is The Advertising Hall of Shame.