Buoyed by the U.S. presidential election, the Summer Olympics and Union of European Football Associations’ (UEFA) championship, the global advertising market is expected to grow 4.6 percent in 2016, up from 3.9 percent last year. Global media services network ZenithOptimedia forecasts total expenditures of $579 billion this year, and $603 billion in 2017.

The election, Olympics and UEFA championship should add a combined $6.1 billion to the global ad market—$3.2 billion from the election, $2 billion from the Olympics and $900 million from the championship. ZenithOptimedia says that these events will add 1.1 percentage points to this year’s growth rate for global advertising expenditure.

The year should also benefit from recovery among European ad markets that suffered the deepest cuts from the financial crisis and its aftermath. Ad spending in Ireland, Portugal and Spain fell 45 percent between 2007 and 2013, and recovered 8.9 percent in 2014 and 7.3 percent in 2015. The markets are expected to return average growth of 6.7 percent a year by 2018. Other European markets that fell sharply during the crisis but are now growing at a rapid pace include Croatia (forecast to grow by 6.1 percent a year by 2018), Denmark (7.3 percent), Hungary (5.2 percent) and Romania (6.3 percent). Even Greece is expected to enjoy annual growth of 3.9 percent.

“Rapid growth from countries that are relatively new to the international advertising market, combined with a resurgence of established markets that were damaged by the financial crisis, will keep the global ad market on track for healthy growth for at least the next few years,” says Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at ZenithOptimedia.

Internet advertising, as usual, is the main driver of global ad spending growth. Internet advertising as a whole is predicted to grow at more than three times the global average rate this year, up 15.7 percent and driven by social media (up 31.9 percent), online video (22.4 percent) and paid search (15.7 percent). The majority of new internet advertising is targeted at mobile devices. ZenithOptimedia forecasts that mobile advertising expenditures will increase by $64 billion between 2015 and 2018, growing by 128 percent and accounting for 92 percent of new spending added to the global market over these years.

Click here for more on ZenithOptimedia’s advertising spending forecasts.