What a week…

I am not sure if RAJAR week always gives the impression of a lot happening but there certainly seems to be lots to talk about this week…

We held our Future of Media Research event at Specific Media this morning with panellists including ITV’s Sarah Messer, Ipsos MediaCT’s John Carroll and Starcom Mediavest Group’s Jim Kite. The panel discussed data v research, data fusion, the JICS, targeting, social media, facial recognition and audio watermarking… Stories to follow on Newsline next week!

In other news, Times editor James Harding is to be recalled to the Leveson inquiry, following new evidence that the paper was involved in email hacking in 2009. And so the never-ending scandal continues!

Facebook has filed its long-awaited plans for a float on the US stock market. The social network’s initial public offering (IPO) of US$5 billion of shares is the largest for an internet company since Google in 2004. This article reveals Facebook by numbers (for example, did you know that Facebook’s total ad revenue in 2011 was $3.15 billion?).

Sky has announced plans to launch a new internet TV service, allowing non-subs to watch Sky content over the internet (with various payment options including pay as you go). Raymond Snoddy talks about Sky’s results in his weekly columnn: “The results for the six months to the end of December were perfectly respectable for a recession, in fact more than respectable. Virtually everything the company does seems to be moving in the right direction.”

And finally, the Q4 2011 RAJAR results – some very positive results for a few brands, especially Capital, but disappointing numbers for others.

Overall listening is down and commercial share is down but it’s not all doom and gloom, according to industry experts. Carat’s Mike Williamson and MediaCom’s Charlie Yeates gave Newsline an agency view; while Absolute’s Adam Bowie and Bauer’s Steve Parkinson commented from an owner’s perspective. James Cridland also writes about the fast/slow growth of digital.

And if all this isn’t exciting enough for you, just think, this week also saw David Beckham grace us with his presence and his pants!!!