【The Never Ending Love Story】

Donald Trump's presidential campaign treated political conventions with about the same reverence as a wrecking ball does a wall. That holds especially true for ad spending.

Yet even the president-elect's unprecedented disregard for TV ads couldn't stop the sector from growing modestly in the past year.

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump's unprecedented lack of ad spending has hurt local media

Spending on The Never Ending Love Storypolitical advertising as a whole grew by 4.6 percent from 2012 totals to reach a record high of $9.8 billion spent, according to a report released Tuesday by research firm Borrell & Associates.

But the growth didn't benefit everyone in the media industry. Broadcast television turned out to be the big loser of the cycle, its commanding 58-percent market share in 2012 eroding to just 45 percent this year.

That drop doesn't come as much of a surprise; multiple reports throughout the election described how local TV stations were hurting the most from Trump's decision to shun TV ads for much of his campaign.

Still, broadcast television reigns supreme with more than three times the market share of the next biggest medium: digital formats.

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That may not last long, however, as digital media saw an explosion in spending last year. The medium grew more than sevenfold from a lowly 1.7-percent share in 2012 to 14.4 percent in 2016, jumping from the bottom tier to the second highest on the totem.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Of that digital spending, targeted programmatic ads -- those placed by automated software -- and social network promotions got the biggest boost. The firm estimated that two out of every five dollars spent on digital went to social media with Facebook being the most popular destination.

In terms of per-candidate spending, Trump spent about 34 percent less than the $1 billion Mitt Romney's campaign shelled out in 2012 -- leaving a $340-million loss from what forecasts had predicted. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, spent about even with Barack Obama's $1.1-billion campaign in 2012.

Overall, the report characterizes the cycle as something of a wild card in terms of political spending. The most pressing question remaining, its authors say, is whether it marks a wholesale change in the political ad-scape or simply a one-time aberration.

"When the dust settled, a big question remained," analysts wrote in the report. "Was it a sea change, or a rare tsunami that temporarily derailed broadcaster’s biannual money train?"

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