The pizza chain Domino's violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and a California law by failing to make its website accessible to visually impaired people who use screen-reading software, a federal judge has ruled.

The decision, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Bernal in the Central District of California, comes two years after the Supreme Court left in place a lower court's ruling that the landmark 1990 federal disability rights law applies to websites and mobile apps.

Bernal's ruling requires Domino's to bring its website into compliance with content accessibility guidelines promulgated by the standards group World Wide Web Consortium, and to pay $4,000 to Guillermo Robles, the plaintiff who sued the pizza chain.

Robles, who is blind but accesses websites by using screen-reading software, alleged in a 2016 lawsuit that he attempted to place an online order for a customized pizza from Domino's, but couldn't because the company's website and app weren't configured in a way his software could read.

Robles claimed that Domino's violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act -- which prohibits places of public accommodation from discriminating against people with disabilities -- and a California civil rights law.

A trial judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2017, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals revived the case two years later.

The appellate judges ruled that businesses with both a physical presence and an online presence must make their websites and mobile apps accessible to people with disabilities.

“The ADA mandates that places of public accommodation, like Domino’s, provide auxiliary aids and services to make visual materials available to individuals who are blind,” that court wrote in a 25-page opinion.

Domino's unsuccessfully sought to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court, which declined to intervene in the battle.

Domino's and Robles then attempted to resolve their dispute through mediation, but the effort failed, according to court papers.

Bernal's new ruling leaves open whether Domino's mobile app also violated civil rights laws. The judge essentially said in his order that a decision regarding the mobile app would be premature, given that there's a factual dispute over the app's accessibility.

Whether the app is accessible to screenreaders may ultimately be decided by a jury, unless Domino's and Robles agree to resolve the case. Bernal has scheduled the matter for a conference in August.

Twitter has promoted Sarah Personette to chief customer officer, overseeing global ad sales, content partnerships and revenue operations, effective Aug. 1.

Personette will replace Matt Drella, who is leaving the company after nine years. Her responsibilities will include overseeing emerging businesses, including MoPub, technology designed to help app developers and mobile publishers earn advertising revenue. 

Personette, who will report directly to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, was hired in 2018 to lead Twitter's global teams focused on relationships with major advertisers and agencies, and brand strategy, as vice president of global client solutions.

Before joining Twitter, she was COO of Refinery29, overseeing business strategy and development, customer revenue, business marketing, growth and analytics, creative services and research. She served as vice president of global business marketing at Facebook from 2014 through 2017. Prior to that, she was U.S. president of Universal McCann Worldwide and senior vice president at Starcom Mediavest Group.

Twitter has set goals of doubling its annual revenue by year-end 2023 (to $7.5 billion) and expanding its advertising capabilities to better compete with Facebook and other platforms.  

During his time at Twitter, Drella, whose most recent title was customer lead, built out and headed the sales organization, serving business advertisers and developed partnerships with media conglomerates worldwide, according to Variety. 

Drella is leaving Twitter to pursue “long-held passions" and spend more time with his family,” according to the company, which expressed gratitude for his contributions in an 8-K filing on Tuesday.

Consumers have turned to texting during the pandemic, with 61% saying they have increased the time they spend on it each day due to COVID-19, according to Text Marketing: Click-thru Rates & Omnichannel Marketing Strategies, a study by SimpleTexting. 

In addition, 78% say that checking, sending or answering texts is their leading activity on smartphones. Overall, consumers have increased their screen time by almost 50% between 2019 and 2021. 

Even better (for marketers) is that 61.8% have subscribed to texts from at least one business in the last year.  

But texts should be sent in moderation. Here are the issues that would cause recipients to unsubscribe 

• Too many text message alerts from the business — 59.5%
• The content is no longer meaningful to me—27.2%
• Receiving text messages at inappropriate times — 6.2%
• Lack of variety in the text messages being sent — 4.5%
• Other — 2.7%

Of the consumers polled, 43.1% receive texts from one to three businesses, while another 33% get them from four to six firms. And 14.8% receive texts from seven to 10 businesses, and 9.2% from 11+.

Among business marketers, 52.5% say opt-in rates have increased, while 37.2% say they have remained the same and 9.9% say they have decreased.  

In contrast, 47.7% said opt-in rates went up in 2020, 47.4% that they were flat and 4.9% that they had decreased. 

Businesses use texting for the following purposes: 

• Sales and promotions — 37.5%
• Customer support — 27.3%
• Text-for-info — 12.1%
• Event or appointment reminders — 9.4%
• Internal communications — 7%
• Emergency alerts — 3.9%
• Sweepstakes or contests — 1.6%

The study also found that 70% of business owners and marketers use other mobile messaging channels such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to communicate with customers.  

In addition, 46% of firms collect phone numbers using web forms. 

Also, 40% include text as part of their omnichannel marketing strategy and 35% say omnichannel campaigns that include texting have stronger conversion rates. 

SimpleTexting surveyed over 1,300 U.S. consumers, business owners and marketers.

Technology may be inserting itself into all areas of the consumer experience. But people are wary of the more advanced applications, judging by Using Retail Tech Innovation To Enhance the Customer Experience, a paper by Euromonitor International and the National Retail Federation, written by Michelle Evans. 

For example, relatively small percentages of shoppers are comfortable with these technologies: 

• Robots guiding me to specific products within a store — 42%
• Brands personalizing experiences to my mood — 27%
• Companies automatically reordering products on my behalf — 26%
• Having a microchip implanted into finger to enable purchase — 20%
• Companies using DNA to improve recommendations — 19%

This suggests that shoppers are far less relaxed about hyper-personalization and subscription reordering than is commonly assumed. 

Not that most of these more advanced functions are top of mind for marketers. In a related survey last November, brands said that these tech-related initiatives were accelerated by COVID-19:

• Expansion of mobile applications and platforms 
• Tailored marketing or personalized recommendations 
• Enhanced website search or site navigation
• Development or improvement of omnichannel presence
• Fulfillment and logistics to improve delivery efficiency.

The question remains: What do consumers want when shopping online? Mostly, they are concerned about that most basic function: delivery and the associated costs. 

Roughly a third of consumers welcome text or email update notifications. But 68% seek free delivery above all. 

Free returns and package tracking are also popular services with each chosen by 50%, followed by the ability to choose the delivery date/time. And roughly 30% of consumers want next-day or same-day delivery.  

Delivery also has an impact on shopping-cart abandonment, with a third of consumers citing unexpected shipping costs as the main reason for abandoning a cart. 

Overall, 75% of connected consumers have abandoned a purchase, 51% because of delivery-related hurdles. And 44% blame payment-related reasons.  

And for shopping in-store? The preferred features include:

• Select items and immediately walk out of store with purchase executed
• Scan items while shopping and make payment via mobile phone
• Earn loyalty points when entering with the assistance of facial recognition
• Use a cart or basket with sensors that automatically scans products when added
• Virtual fitting rooms that show you how the product will fit
  

Here’s one other data point: The study predicts that food and drink ecommerce will grow by 8% in 2021. Petcare is second, consumer appliances third.

The annual consumer survey was fielded in March 2021 across 20 countries, with 1,000 responses captured per country. 

Did that ad improve the way you measure targeting? Catalina Marketing, a media company that got its name from the island off the California coast, today announced its technology has become interoperable with Verizon Media ConnectID.

The goal of this extended partnership is to improve on measurement capabilities for CPG advertisers as companies lose the ability to track and target ads to consumers through the Google Chrome browser and other platforms.

“Following a disruptive year for CPGs, advertisers are now faced with impending cookie deprecation and further challenges to measurement and campaign performance,” said Brian Dunphy, senior vice president of channel sales and strategic partnerships at Catalina.

He believes it’s all about driving performance and measurement, and that as the industry shifts, marketers will begin to see companies with scale and ethically sourced data rise to the top.

Verizon Media ConnectID enables advertisers to reach audiences without the need for cookies. With 200 billion data signals daily, Verizon Media’s Identity Graph is built on opt-in, deterministic data from direct consumer relationships across a range of omnichannel, cross-screen touchpoints including mobile app, search, owned and operated sites and apps, email and more.

Verizon Media today reaches 148 million deterministic logged in users across more than 240 million unique profiles and 400 million unique devices, fueled by both direct consumer relationships and partnerships.

Catalina has access to 236 million digitally enabled unique shopper cards spanning 103 million U.S. households. It also has relationships with thousands of grocery stores, as well as drug stores, mass general, and convenience.

It’s not the first partnership between Catalina and Verizon Media. A partnership between the two companies announced April 1, 2021, made the media company the first demand-side platform (DSP) to integrate Catalina’s in-store data with online ads.

The partnership cemented earlier this year lets brands working with Verizon to link in-store and online shopping data to their digital ad campaigns in real-time. It works by matching Catalina’s sales data directly with Verizon Media’s identity graph.

Catalina has been busy forming partnerships. In May it formed a partnership with audio company and podcast publisher iHeartMedia to measure and attribute the impact of podcast advertising on offline sales in physical stores, which seems to represent the majority of CPG purchases, according to the company.

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Monday unveiled its first commercial research product, an annual syndicated study benchmarking the degree to which Americans share their digital devices, as well as their digital accounts, and it is considering launching others so long as the new products do not compete with the ones its members market to advertisers, agencies and media suppliers.

"We would like to do others," ARF Chief Research Officer Paul Donato confirmed Monday after the foundation announced its first syndicated research study (see related story).

"They need to have that sort of pan-industry aspect to them and provide empirical support across the industry," he explained, adding, "We shouldn't be in the business of competing with our members."

Donato, who was the Chief Research Officer of Nielsen, one of the ARF's biggest members, before joining the foundation, previously headed research at a long list of pioneering research suppliers, including Kantar Media, R.D. Percy & Co., Audits & Surveys, IBOBPE.

He also confirmed the new, as-yet-unnamed research product is the first syndicated study created by the ARF, and that it will be owned by the foundation. But he said it made sense for the ARF to create and own it, because it will provide an important industry need that other research suppliers will be able to use to benchmark their own proprietary research on.

The study, which was designed by Donato's ARF staff, will be fielded by The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC), has three methodological components: an online survey, a 10,000-person panel, and face-to-face interviews with consumers. Donato said his staff worked on 50 different versions of the survey before finalizing it.

While the study has seven different sponsors -- six research and/or media suppliers (605, Experian, Innovid, Neustar, The NPD Group, and VideoAmp; and one brand marketer, Verizon -- will be licensed for a fee to other companies, regardless of whether they are ARF members of not.

Donato acknowledged that the ARF's diversification into a profit-oriented research supply business is a departure for the non-profit foundation, which was originally conceived by the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers in the 1930's to serve as the ad industry's research authority. But he says it is part of its evolution. He says the ARF is not like other trade association's, including the 4As and the ANA, or media-centric ones like the Interactive Advertising Bureau or the Mobile Marketing Association, which are intended to advance the interests of their main constituents.

Consequently, he says any new syndicated research studies created by the ARF need to play a neutral role in serving all of the ARF's stakeholders: advertisers, agencies, and media and research suppliers.

"We won't be doing currency research and I do not see us doing things originally that our members would also do," he said, adding that the digital-sharing study is a good benchmark for other forms of research the ARF would like to get into.

Donato spoke to MediaPost by phone from an abandoned mill in Fall River, MA, which as been his home since the start of the pandemic.

Consumers want faster delivery, added convenience and more interactive live events as the COVID-19 pandemic eases, judging by a new study from Software AG. 

Of those surveyed, 55% want better in-person experiences. And 34% have greater expectations of fast online retail delivery than they did a year ago — in fact, 70% will choose a retailer based solely on delivery speed. 

Among consumers who attend large-scale, in-person events, 76% would like to see at least one of the following implemented: 

• Mobile enabled ticketing/check-in — 49%
• Mobile-enabled payment — 38%
• Wait estimates/crowd management alerts (restroom, concierge lines, merchandise, entry point, etc. — 38%

Concierge experience from their seat (mobile-enabled ordering for food/beverage) — 34%

Mobile-enabled interactive activities (contests, polling, voting, etc. — 27%

In addition, 73% believe their restaurant experiences — whether dining or takeout — should be  enhanced with a mobile component, and 72% plan to use at least one of these services after COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted: 

• Mobile-enabled ordering — 54% 
• Mobile-enabled payment — 38%
• Mobile-enabled reservations/booking — 38%

Also, consumers who use online grocery ordering, 84% will maintain or increase their patronage after restrictions are lifted. 

Moreover, 80% of shoppers use a store’s Buy Online, Pick-Up In Store option (BOPIS) will continue to do so after COVID-19 safety restrictions are lifted.  

“Now that consumers know what is possible, they not only expect the enhancements and conveniences they see today, but they want more,” states Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of Software AG.

Brahmawar adds: “Integration, IoT and business transformation software make this all possible, whether it’s expediting supply-chain processes for delivery, incorporating smart sensors to manage lines and crowds, or integrating physical and digital channels for seamless touchpoints.”

Software AG surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers.

In what appears to be an industry first, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) is teaming with seven industry research and/or media suppliers to conduct research on digital device usage and account sharing, which it plans to ultimately launch as a syndicated measurement service.

As part of the announcement, the ARF said it would apply to the Media Rating Council to accredit the service its “second year of execution.”

The move further blurs the lines of the ad industry’s media research authorities and its suppliers, indicating how much Madison Avenue has changed from its “media neutral” roots.

The ARF was originally founded by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in 1936 as a nonprofit focused on improving the burgeoning science of advertising research.

Over the past couple of decades, the ARF has become more dependent on research suppliers as a source of revenues, and many vendors -- especially big digital platforms and research providers -- are now on its board of trustees.

The MRC was founded in the 1960s as a neutral self-regulatory media ratings watchdog following Congressional hearings about questionable practices in the media research industry. It conducts independent audits of media measurement services and grants them accreditation when it meets its minimum standards.

In recent years, some of those services were not syndicated measurement services per se, but proprietary measurement systems created by digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to measure their own inventory. It does not appear that the MRC has ever audited or accredited a measurement service from another ad industry association.

In today’s announcement, the ARF said it was teaming with 605, Experian, Innovid, Neustar, The NPD Group, Verizon and VideoAmp to conduct an online survey and live interviews of a national sample of 10,000 respondents, “to assess personal and household sharing and usage of devices and digital media and ecommerce accounts.”

The ARF said the research will be conducted by The University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and that it will continue to be conducted “as least annually.”

While it never explicitly states any plans to offer it as an industry measurement service, the ARF said it and the seven vendors sponsoring the research would apply to MRC to accredit it in its second year.

“The sponsors of the project represent a diverse cross-section of the industry,” the ARF noted in its statement, adding that each of the sponsoring companies contributed “experts to the technical advisory committee that oversees the study.”

The announcement does not indicate whether any ad industry representatives such as advertisers or agencies will be explicitly involved in it.

And while the MRC has never accredited a service from a trade association previously, it is known to have been talking with out-of-home measurement association GeoPath (formerly the Traffic Audit Bureau) about auditing and accrediting its process.

But unlike the ARF project, GeoPath operates as a tripartite JIC, or joint industry committee, in which all sides of the industry -- advertisers, agencies and media suppliers -- are on the board and have a say.