Unregulated, unrestrained: era of the online political ad comes to midterms

Parties once focused on TV but now a billion-dollar effort embraces the highly targeted and almost rule-free digital world

The advert is in grainy black and white, with an edgy horror movie soundtrack. As gunfights erupt in the streets, the narrator announces in a gravelly bass voice that John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania, has a love affair with criminals".

Fetterman has voted over and over to release the state's most violent criminals, including murderers", the narrator says. If elected, he would keep the drugs flowing, the killers killing, and the children dying".