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SpeakOut.com & Slate Let Readers Rate the "Damned Spot"
Dial Testing of Presidential Campaign Ads to be Completed Online as Race Tightens

WASHINGTON, D.C -- September 27, 2000 -- The controversy over the campaign television ads is heating up and the Bush and Gore ad teams are pulling out all the stops to get attention this fall. SpeakOut.com and Slate have teamed up to give the American public the chance to judge the ads for themselves - fair or unfair, exploitative or sincere.

Slate's ongoing column "Damned Spot," authored by some of its top writers including Jacob Wiesberg and Chris Suellentrop, critique the presidential campaigns' new TV spots as they are released each week. Some of the ads that have been rated include, the DNC's ads "Judge" and "Ian" and the RNC's ad "Really." The tool and results are available on SpeakOut.com and through links on Slate. Slate.com, the Internet's top rated Webzine is read by over 2 million unique users each month according to recent Media Metrix data.

SpeakOut.com, using its new Ntercept^TM online research technology, has custom-designed opinion research software for Slate that allows users to enter the interactive site. There, users are greeted by a video moderator who invites them to rate the latest TV ad on a second-by second basis. Each participant is presented with an Internet-based "dial meter" on their computer that allows them to react to every second of the spot on a 0-100 scale indicating levels of disapproval and approval. The aggregated data from the respondents, broken down by party and other demographic factors, is then processed and available on the site for users to see.

The Ntercept^TM platform, which was used to analyze the hits and misses of the major speeches at the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, is now being deployed for clients research and internet and media partnerships.

About SpeakOut.com

Based in Washington, DC, SpeakOut.com  is America's leading non-partisan Internet activism portal and online opinion research company. Launched in February 2000, SpeakOut.com seeks to enhance the democratic process by enabling citizens to have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Recently named by Forbes Magazine as one of the Top 10 political websites, SpeakOut offers users a wide variety of news and information tailored to their interests, and activism tools allowing aggregated messaging to a vast array of public officeholders, candidates, business and news executives. SpeakOut.com invites users to participate in surveys and market research through its patent-pending NterceptTM research technology that brings the research room to the living room. Ntercept^TM provides real time, second-by-second analysis and allows for larger panels of respondents than ever before, with a lower cost and greater speed.

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