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.

For once in their lives, bargain-loving Metro readers have resisted temptation from the likes of Lidl and Aldi, and instead crowned a new winner for Who won the Metro?

The new poster boy for BT, Jose Mourinho, managed to attract 92% of Metro readers’ attention in a new campaign for BT Sport for a total of 2.6 seconds.

And who could resist those smouldering eyes and that carefully furrowed brow? Not Metro readers, apparently, who mostly skipped the actual copy of the ad.

Well, he’s not called “the special one” for nothing.

“Time and time again there are certain techniques which help to capture attention: use of people (particularly celebrities), short headlines, high quality images and simplicity are all good ways to increase an ads’ standout,” said Lumen.

“BT’s full page ad on page six of the Metro uses all of these techniques and the results speak for themselves.”

While Mourhino’s face ensured that the majority of readers didn’t read the long copy, a short and “easy to digest” headline drew in a significant number of eyes, which finished their journey at BT’s logo in the bottom right-hand corner.

“People want to get the most amount of information for the minimum expenditure effort,” said Lumen. “In almost all of the successful ads we test, attention is guided around the page. Here, thought has been put into how people will read the ad.

“Even on good ads, most people only spend a few seconds looking at them; it’s important to consider these people and what they can really absorb within that time.”