Indeed, after living in são paulo for a while going anywhere else in brazil lead to a slight culture shock.
In a sense this didn't hurt advertisers at all, as the demand for advertisement stayed exactly the same, they just had to change the available media. Think of it as a prisoner's dillema-like situation, where defecting is plastering a huge sign in front of people. It's better for everyone if nobody does that, but whoever breaks the law and does it can get an advantage.
Preventing people from defecting in these situations is exactly the point of a government (regardless of how much I disagree with Kassab's actual politics and would never vote for him).
Are you sure that the policy wasn't designed to transfer control of the outdoor advertising industry to a subset of advertisers? You know... ban advertising, and kill off the existing outdoor-ad only companies. Then reintroduce outdoor advertising, granting permits only to some group of "respectable" advertisers.
I'm not saying that this is the case here, but it's a fair question, I think.
Not really. The ban doesn't apply to indoor ads so isn't applicable to the metro's trains or stations. As for the buses, they aren't displaying ads at all.
Buses are pretty much ads on wheels, --- and in some buses of the green variety [1] there are TV sets broadcasting most relevant content such as government propaganda, the horoscope, news and events, and yes, advertisement.
[1] I'm yet to figure out what the colours mean on buses.
Regarding [1], each bus company has a different color. The companies won different government contracts for different parts of the city, so the east side is roughly red, the south blue, the north-west green, etc.
In a sense this didn't hurt advertisers at all, as the demand for advertisement stayed exactly the same, they just had to change the available media. Think of it as a prisoner's dillema-like situation, where defecting is plastering a huge sign in front of people. It's better for everyone if nobody does that, but whoever breaks the law and does it can get an advantage.
Preventing people from defecting in these situations is exactly the point of a government (regardless of how much I disagree with Kassab's actual politics and would never vote for him).