Yes. I worked in the "street furniture" industry. It used to me Cemusa and another company who's name slips mind.

This was decades ago, but still in an Era when people were asking why pay phones still exist. It's the ad revenue.

Companies like Cemusa give cities like NYC big money (dozens or hundreds of millions) to buy the right to provide the city with " street furniture" for free, in exchange for the right to sell the ad revenue placed on those pieces of street furniture. This includes pay phones, bus stop shelters, benches, news stands, etc.

This dynamic is what caused NYC payphones to exist far beyond their useful life as pay phones.

I talk about it on this "being an engineer" podcast I was recently on: https://teampipeline.us/ian-mceachern-engineering-freelancin...