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Three new ad spending forecasts released Sunday night are pegging ad growth next year partly on the Winter Olympics, the World Cup and the mid-term elections in the U.S., but forecasters continued to regard Western Europe with caution.

WPP’s GroupM revised its worldwide advertising spending forecast for 2014 downward to 4.6% from 5.1%, its prediction earlier this year, citing “economic gridlock in the U.S. and a persistent financial crisis in the Eurozone.” The media agency network is now forecasting an increase in global spending from $508 billion in 2013 to $531 billion in 2014.

In Western Europe, the group is projecting a 1% decrease in spending in 2013 and, tentatively, an end to declines next year. “We predict Western Europe advertising will return to modest 2% growth in 2014, but this depends on stability being restored to the troubled Eurozone periphery,” the GroupM report said.

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