• by Wayne Friedman , January 23, 2018

Worldwide advertising is expected to rise nearly 4.7% to $572 billion this year -- helped by the Winter Olympics, the FIFA World Cup and the U.S. midterm elections.

Looking at 96 markets, WARC, a London-based ad/marketing research company, says big markets will see gains, with North America climbing 5%, Asia-Pacific 6% and Western Europe adding 2.6%.

Central and Eastern Europe will see some of the strongest improvements -- rising 8.4%. Latin America will be the second-fastest-growing area at 7%. Advertising will drop across the Middle East and African countries -- 4.1% -- but the research company says this will be less than in previous years.

In 2017, WARC says global advertising gained 3% to $546 billion, a decline from the 3.8% increase in 2016.

Mobile advertising witnessed the greatest share gain last year -- up 5.9 percentage points to a a 20.6% share, at $112 billion. The U.S. has 45% of the global mobile advertising market.

Online desktop advertising was down 2% in share to a 18.3% or $103 billion.

TV remains the largest media channel -- although it has dipped 1.5 percentage points to a 36.5% share, reaching $199.5 billion. TV advertising outweighs online video spending by a ratio of six to one.

Print declined 2.2 percentage share points to $71.5 billion. Both out-of-home and radio dipped slightly to a 5.7% share -- to $32.6 billion each. Cinema was steady at $4 billion.