Who won the Metro?

Have you ever wondered which ads placed in the national newspapers are the most effective at engaging readers? Newsline has partnered with Lumen Research to find out.

Andy Murray may have crashed and burned a little sooner than we’d hoped, but supermarkets still managed to cash in on our undeterred Wimbledon spirits, with Asda winning this month’s top ad spot in the Metro with a campaign for the UK’s number 1 Wimbledon essential…Pimm’s (surprise, surprise).

Because strawberries and cream don’t quite have the same kick (nor make trying to follow the ball half as fun), 86% of Metro readers were drawn in by the alco-offering for an average of 4.2 seconds – 2 seconds above the norm.

However, it’s not just the nation’s collective love for all things boozy that secured Asda the top spot, it seems, with Lumen also attributing its success to the people in the ad.

[advert position=”left”]

“Humans are interested in what friends are looking at and readers were interested in where the man in the image was looking,” explains Lumen founder Mike Follett.

“It appears as though he’s looking at the man in the foreground’s glass, which has fortunately bled over onto the bottle of Pimm’s being advertised, leading to high engagement.”

The people featured in the ad engaged 80% of readers for almost 3 seconds, with readers first drawn to the guy in the middle, the big text below and then the bottle of Pimm’s next to it. The Asda logo was looked at fourth, followed by the small print at the very bottom.

“We’ve frequently found that images of people engage readers,” Follett added. “This is especially the case when the people featured are enjoying themselves.”

Asda also beat all other retail grocers when it came to both prompted and spontaneous recall.