BARRON'S Online Hits Critical Mass with 100,000 Registered Users.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 17, 1996--BARRON'S Online, the electronic edition of BARRON'S(R) on the World Wide Web, reached a critically important milestone last week with the registration of its 100,000th subscriber to its innovative, new financial Web site.

As an important part of the Dow Jones family of financial Web sites now available to active investors here and abroad, BARRON'S Online (www.barrons.com) offers subscribers access to the complete editorial content of BARRON'S each Saturday morning at 8 A.M. (EST). Registered users of BOL(SM) also get comprehensive Dossiers that include historical pricing and fundamental data for over 15,000 equities, 5,800 mutual funds and 1,000 ADR's (updated nightly); company news (20-minute delayed); and access to archives that contains BARRON'S articles from previous editions. Also, BOL now provides special intraweek editorial content and market updates exclusive to BARRON'S Online.

"We are now generating excellent traffic to BOL with over 20,000 unique visitors each and every week," said Ted Donahue, director of marketing. He continued, "We are providing the gold standard in reporting, commentary and perspective on global financial markets that you can only find in the pages of BARRON'S. With U.S. financial market growth continuing at a record pace, active investors are coming to our Web site to check their bearings and insure that their investment strategies are on target."

For BOL advertisers, this rapid expansion of registered users for BARRON'S Online and overall site activity has represented a windfall in the delivery of "bonus" ad banner impressions versus in-going guarantees. "We are generating very strong advertiser interest and advertising bookings for 1997," according to Jeff Meyer, national sales director for BARRON'S and BARRON'S Online. "With our state-of-the-art reporting tools that include monthly I/AUDIT(R) reports from I/PRO(R) and ad banner rotation and tracking with NetGravity(R) software, we are able to provide advertisers with a comprehensive accounting of web site/ad banner activity. Add to this our ability to provide advertisers with a comprehensive, demographic profile of our subscribers and we deliver what advertisers are seeking in this emerging new medium."

BARRON'S Online is a joint venture between IDD Information Services and Dow Jones & Company. IDD Information Services is majority owned by Dow Jones, and is also the publisher of Investment Dealers' Digest as well as a major supplier of financial data and software tools to the institutional investment community and the emerging electronic consumer financial marketplace on the WWW.

Electronic information services from Dow Jones & Company in addition to BARRON'S Online include Dow Jones Telerate(R), a provider of real-time financial information to the international business community; the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition(R); Dow Jones News Service(R) and other business news wires; and Business Information Services(R), which provides business information to corporations and consumers by computer, telephone, facsimile and radio. Dow Jones also produces international business television programming.

CONTACT: BARRON'S Online

Ted Donahue, 212/323-9006

e-mail: [e-mail]

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http://www.barrons.com