LONDON, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Spending on global advertising will grow 3.5 percent this year, even without the kind of boost seen in 2012 from big events like the Olympics and the U.S. election, indicating that the market is stabilising, a forecast said on Monday.
ZenithOptimedia said its growth forecast was unchanged from June, making it the first time since the second quarter of 2012 it has not downgraded its forecast.
"The stability of global adspend growth this year - a year without big events like the Olympics and U.S. elections - shows that the advertising recovery is on track, promising even stronger growth in 2014 and 2015," said Steve King, chief executive of ZenithOptimedia, the forecasting unit of Publicis Groupe, the world's third-biggest advertising group by sales after WPP and Omnicom.
Zenith said the increasing popularity of mobile phones for advertising was helping to grow the overall market, with mobile ad spend forecast to account for 37 percent of all growth this year.
Zenith said the overall improvement underlined the stability it was now seeing in the global advertising market.
"Expectations for this year have finally levelled after a long period of slow erosion by bad economic news," it said.
The group expects growth to climb to 5.1 percent in 2014 and to 5.9 percent in 2015, as the wider European economy recovers.
In the Eurozone ad market, it forecasts a decline of 4.3 percent for 2013 followed by 0.7 percent growth in 2014 and 1.9 percent growth in 2015.
It increased the forecast for adspend growth in emerging markets this year to 7.6 percent from 7 percent it forecast in June.
Ad agencies Publicis and Omnicom have announced plans to merge.