It's a positive cycle. He was all over the place promoting the new release, which was very successful, which has driven the album to ludicrous highs, which gets him back on even more media, which makes the album even more successful etc...
What Ed Sheeran did that was pretty smart, and lots of other entertainers fail at, was he pretty much went away for a while to write the new album. He didn't really tease anything until it was just about to come out, and managed to build up a much bigger frenzy than he would have otherwise. He's...