Be Free Enhances Customer Experience With Innovations in Merchandising, Planning, Reporting &Affiliate Communications.

Business/Technology Editors

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 31, 2000

Launches Version 5.5 of Its BFAST Technology

Revamps Auto-Merchandiser Improving Promotional

Planning &Targeting Capabilities

Performance marketing leader Be Free, Inc. (Nasdaq:BFRE) today announced the release of version 5.5 of its BFAST(sm) technology and the launch of an enhanced version of its Auto-Merchandiser product, which allows merchants to control targeted and rotating promotions on affiliate sites. Be Free's customers - leading e-retailers and portals such as America Online, barnesandnoble.com and Visa USA - are now even better equipped to create and manage innovative and successful performance marketing programs.

With this upgrade to the BFAST application and interface, Be Free makes it even easier for its customers to target promotions, organize section links for affiliates, run business critical reports and analysis quickly and implement global affiliate compensation changes. Be Free's enhanced Auto-Merchandiser e-nables(sm) Be Free customers to control and push affiliate promotions to space on its affiliate sites, providing fresh and relevant content for each individual affiliate site. Using Auto-Merchandiser the merchant's promotion is more meaningful to the audience visiting the affiliate site, and thus more likely to generate sales for the merchant. The revamped Auto-Merchandiser includes a dynamic planning and management tool, the Visual Promotion Planner, which makes it easy to proactively plan promotions and track results.

&uot;Version 5.5 significantly improves the functionality our customers need to get their jobs done better, faster and easier,&uot; said Ellen Brezniak, vice president of product marketing at Be Free, Inc. &uot;Be Free continually strives to create software and tools that allow its customers' affiliate programs to be the most streamlined, intuitive and effective in the industry.&uot;

Highlights of the Revamped Auto-Merchandiser &New Visual Promotion Planner

Actively Target Specific Audiences -- Be Free customers can dynamically &uot;push&uot; promotions out to affiliate sites, targeting specific creatives and promotions to different sets of affiliates, based on both the category or focus of the affiliate site and the browser or operating system of the end consumer.

Timing Enhancements -- Promotions can be scheduled in advance to run on certain days of the week and at certain times of each day on a recurring basis. These timing features, when combined with additional categorical targeting, help the merchants bring relevant promotions to the users on affiliate sites. Marketers using Auto-Merchandiser now have the ability to time promotions by 15 minute increments to opportunistically target audiences' surfing patterns such as targeting working professionals at lunchtime or kids after school. Promotions can also be scheduled to run around specific events like the Super Bowl, major news events or holidays such as Valentine's Day or Father's Day.

Easily Manage the Promotional Mix -- Auto-Merchandiser has been revamped to include an easy-to-use promotion management interface, the Visual Promotion Planner, where merchants plan, schedule and track multiple promotions. This interface allows a graphic display that illustrates the promotions scheduled over time, with the ability to zoom in to each promotion's specifics and make changes in real time. This intuitive and simple visual planner makes it easy for affiliate marketing executives to manage the promotions and focus their valuable time on merchandising and strategy.

Test &Track Creatives -- Because of the high degree of control over merchandising and its ability to track results back to the individual creative, Auto-Merchandiser is a perfect environment for testing promotions. Auto-Merchandiser reports provide merchants with the full picture of promotion activity, so they can quantitatively compare the performance of individual creatives against one another and continually optimize the success of their program.

Easy Category Management -- Category targeting is an extremely useful way to segment. However, with many thousands of affiliates, affiliate marketers need flexibility in defining and assigning category definitions. Merchants are now able to target by category using Auto-Merchandiser. Marketers are able to define the categories most useful for segmenting their market, and then allow affiliates to self-select category assignments in the application process and on Reporting.net. For those merchants desiring more control over this process, BFAST 5.5 also lets merchants utilize private categories only visible to the merchant for targeting purposes.

Highlights of BFAST Version 5.5

Logical Organization of Links -- BFAST 5.5 offers merchants new ways to organize links on Reporting.net, the site where affiliates create links, track progress and communicate with merchants. Merchants are now able to create a hierarchy of three organizational levels of links -- making it easier and faster for affiliates to locate the links they need. In addition, merchants can distribute links into separate pages--enabling individual pages to load faster.

Speedy Reporting &Analysis -- Be Free has increased the speed of six of its most business-critical reports. This provides affiliate marketing executives with high-level summaries of the results of their affiliate marketing programs quickly and easily -- minimizing the time spent running the reports to allow for more thoughtful review and analysis. In addition, a new report summarizing the performance of section links has been added. With this new report, merchants can summarize section link performance across an entire program, report on the number of impressions, click-throughs, numbers of orders and shipment information.

Automatically Implement Compensation Changes

Affiliate programs are extensions of a merchant's marketing and sales channel. Compensation is a key way to motivate and manage a sales channel. BFAST provides merchants with a wide range of tools to tailor compensation to the business needs of merchants. BFAST 5.5 enhances these capabilities by enabling merchants to plan and implement affiliate compensation changes for each of a merchant's affiliate program levels directly from the BFAST interface. This feature provides the merchant a finely tuned tool to manage their affiliate sales team. Using this capability, merchants can update compensation for all or some of their affiliates, plan special incentives in advance and implement the appropriate changes automatically - saving time and enhancing their ability to incent affiliates.

About Be Free, Inc.

Be Free, Inc. (Nasdaq: BFRE) is the leader of performance marketing - the next generation of online marketing. Be Free helps its customers build and manage uniquely branded online sales channels, e-nabling(sm) these sites to capture revenue by selling products in context on locations throughout the Web. Collectively, Be Free's customers have more than 2.7 million affiliates in their sales channels and include some of the Internet's leading merchants such as America Online, Inc. (NYSE: AOL), barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN), GoTo.com (Nasdaq: GOTO), 800.com, Mercata, Reel.com (Nasdaq: HLYW), C|Net (Nasdaq: CNET), Priceline (Nasdaq: PCLN), About.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: BOUT), PC Connection, Inc. (Nasdaq: PCCC) and Yahoo!(R), GeoCities (Nasdaq: YHOO). Affiliates can enroll in performance marketing programs using Be Free's technology with a streamlined application form called FastApp(sm), located at http://www.reporting.net/networks/affiliates/bf_fast_app.

Founded in 1996, Be Free has offices in Marlborough, MA, Pittsburgh, PA, Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA, Campbell, CA and New York, NY. For more information, visit http://www.befree.com.

Statements in this news release about Be Free, Inc. may be considered forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the Company's current expectations, hopes, beliefs and estimates. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or projected. Further information about the risk factors that could affect the Company's performance are contained in the Company's filings with the Securities Exchange Commission, including but not limited to its S-1 dated November 3, 1999.