Victoria's Secret Online Fashion Show Coincides with Jump in Silverlight Penetration to Nearly 50% of All Personal Computers in the US.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Looking to demonstrate how its advanced proprietary Sample technology - OTXCortex - can quickly examine and route millions of unique users to a relevant range of surveys in its system, global research firm OTX announced today that it has definitively verified penetration of Microsoft's Silverlight multi-media software at nearly 50% (47.7%) of personal computers in the United States.

Microsoft announced at its November 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC09) that its Silverlight personal computer penetration was around 45%. Up until now, no third party source has been able to independently verify that claim.

The almost 50% threshold was reached during the December 1st to December 5th, 2009 timeframe when OTX instructed Cortex to again evaluate which of an estimated 742,785 unique users passing through Cortex had the Silverlight software downloaded on the personal computers they were using. In September 2009, the first time OTX evaluated Silverlight penetration, 41% (40.6%) of online users in the US had Silverlight on their computers. In mid-November, that number grew to just under 45% (44.7%) in line with Microsoft's estimate.

Closing in on the 50% threshold coincides not surprisingly with Microsoft's savvy partnership with The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show (aired December 1, 2009) and which required users to download Silverlight in order to view it online during the live broadcast and in the weeks that followed.

"Online users from a huge number of different sources enter our Cortex environment and voluntarily share their pc and software status in order to participate in the most appropriate surveys for each of them," said Jim Forrest, OTX SVP Brand and Advertising Insights. "We expected that the popularity of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show which requires Silverlight to watch it online would drive the numbers even higher and allow us to be the first to verify an actual user count."

Mr. Forrest estimates that Silverlight will cross the threshold of 50+% of all US online users before the end of 2009 due in part to Microsoft's introduction of a new beta version of Bing Maps last week. OTX also estimates that by early February 2010, one in six US online users will have the Silverlight plug-in, and that the number will grow even more significantly as the 2010 Winter Olympics get underway and the demand to watch the Games online grows.

Silverlight is a Microsoft developed plug-in platform that creates rich internet experiences and provides a similar functionality and user experience as Adobe Flash which is the most common and universally available platform for computers connected to the internet.

OTXCortex's sampling engine intelligently conducts real-time analysis of incoming visitors willing to take a survey. As a result, it creates accurate, replicable and consistent samples for the hundreds of live surveys looking for different types of target consumers at any given moment. OTX pioneered the use of blended multi-sourced sampling, real-time sample, and sample de-duplication since 2002, and today provides the most representative view of the online consumer used by most of the leading media and advertisers.

About the OTXCortex(SM) Silverlight Threshold Penetration Study

Over a period of days in the months of September, November and most recently December 2009, OTX assigned the Cortex technology to track the presence of Microsoft's Silverlight software on all personal computers entering the Cortex environment resulting in the evaluation of just over 2.54mm unique users. OTX's online user sample comes from 60+ global sample partners and sources, and represents the largest multi-sourced sample in the world. OTXCortex(SM) determines the presence of Silverlight early in the routing process after which these Silverlight consumers (along with the non-Silverlight consumers) are routed to a range of relevant surveys that OTX had been hired to field, and asked demographic and a variety of other survey questions for market research purposes.

About OTX

OTX (www.otxresearch.com) is a global research and consulting firm that specializes in providing a suite of multi-media research products to the marketing, entertainment and advertising communities. OTX has developed a range of innovative approaches - integrating technology and immersive techniques with extensive traditional research experience - to reach and engage today's digitally-driven consumer more effectively, resulting in deeper and more profound consumer insights. In just nine years OTX has become the 18th largest research agency in the U.S. with offices in London, Los Angeles, New York, Cincinnati, Miami, and Chicago with strategic partners in Germany, Russia, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Mexico. Follow OTX on Twitter: http://twitter.com/otxresearch. Join the OTX Facebook Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/otxresearch.

    OTX Media Contact:
    Tom Harbeck
    212-524-8231
    tharbeck@otxresearch.com

SOURCE OTX Research

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