NEW YORK—For marketing and media company executives, 2021 is shaping up to be a banner year in some ways. According to a recent eMarketer forecast, pent-up demand for traditional advertising – coupled with “exploding growth in e-commerce-related ad spending and social media advertising – the research firm said it expects “a record-setting pace for ad spending growth worldwide this year.”

In addition, eMarketer noted that the trend line for advertising spending going forward also shifted up, “thanks to the unexpected resilience of digital ad spending in 2020.”

The updated eMarketer forecast indicates total media ad spending worldwide will reach almost $748 billion this year, with a growth rate of 15 percent. This is the fastest growth rate since eMarketer began tracking the metric 10 years ago, the firm said.

By the end of 2024, ad spending will close in on the $1 trillion mark. (Note that, for context, the ad-spending total just hit the $500 billion mark in 2016.)

Even traditional ad spending will grow this year, by 7.6 percent, also its fastest growth rate since eMarketer began tracking this metric globally. “The additional $20.6 billion in traditional ad spending will help drive the overall reacceleration, but the main story will remain in the digital realm, as traditional ad spend will never again reach 2019 levels,” eMarketer said.

Digital’s share of worldwide media ad spending will cross the 60 percent threshold this year for the first time and is on track to reach nearly 70 percent by the end of the forecast period in 2025.

Not surprisingly, traditional ad spending bore the brunt of the pandemic last year. Advertising dollars flowing to TV, radio, out-of-home (OOH), newspapers, and other print publishers contracted by 15.7 percent worldwide in 2020. Pre-pandemic, eMarketer said it had forecast a far more moderate 0.2 percent decline for traditional ad spending.