GMAT Essays (AWA)

The following appeared in an advertising brochure carried by ChromeChannel Communication salespeople:

Pay-per-click web advertising is the best investment an advertiser can make. In the eighteen months since MacDowell's halved its television advertising and doubled its web advertising, its sales have grown by nearly 30% and it has opened forty more stores to keep up with demand. This is just one example of the fact that television advertising is on its way out, and smart businesses will continue to up their investment in pay-per-click ads.

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.


The argument says that Pay-per-click advertising is best compared to television advertising and explains the same taking an example of MacDowell's case for a duration of 18 months. The argument seems to indicate that since MacDowell has grown by a vast amount once it doubled the web advertising, the same strategy can be applied for Chrome-channel Communication. This argument cannot sound good enough for the following reasons.

Primarily, Any market will contain plenty of options and argument does not mention any advertising methods other than TV and web. So assuming that Web advertising is best without analysing the other options is not a good strategy. We have plenty of other advertising methods such as Paper advertising, Poster advertisements etc.

Secondarily, the author considers the case of MacDowell and opines that since it halved its television advertising and doubled its web advertising, its sales have grown and resulted in opening of forty more stores. He assumes success is because of increasing investment in web advertising but does not consider other factors that occurred in the same or before 18 months. There can be many external factors as for instance the increase in sales and opportunities could have resulted because of the TV advertisements itself however little amount is invested. There is no supporting information so as to inform why the author makes the causal argument.

Thirdly, One cannot make perfect analysis by considering just one example and assume that television advertising is on its way out, and smart businesses will continue to up their investment in pay-per-click ads. The reality can be much different and TV advertising may sustain by throwing the ads in between famous TV soaps or programs thereby gaining attention of the viewers. The web advertising does have no sustain as the viewers who do not to get disturbed by adds may opt for ad-blocking softwares which may ruin the plans of the Communication channel if implemented.

Finally, As per the above mentioned considerations, the argument does not look strong enough to make an positive impact on sales of the Channel. advertisement. The argument is to be reconsidered after through review of all existing advertising media and their impact on customers. Since, what applies for one need not apply everyone, the channel needs to have its own strategy weighing all its factors and taking cases of similar channels for more information.

Hi Meera.

This essay is so much better organized than your previous essays. What an improvement. I think that could could have developed some of discussions a little more, but overall you have things headed in a good direction.

One thing that does jump out is that what you wrote does not exactly match the prompt. You talk of ChromeChannel as a potential web advertiser whereas actually ChromeChannel is a purveyor of web advertising.

Meanwhile, at times your expression could be tighter. For instance, "This argument cannot sound strong enough" conveys that there is no way for the argument to be fixed in order to sound strong enough for some purpose, a purpose that is not defined in the prompt or in your essay.

At the same time, your use of English is at times fairly strong, for example when you say, "He assumes success is because of increasing investment in web advertising but does not consider other factors that occurred in the same or before 18 months."

Also, at times your leave out words such as the articles "a" and "the". Here's an example. "Any market will contain plenty of options and argument does not". Really there has to be a "the" before "argument". Overall your wording and choice of words could be tighter. OK, fine though, English is not your first language.

Overall this essay is decent. While your sentence construction and word choice could be better, I think that if you had noticed that ChromeChannel is a seller rather than a potential purchaser of advertising, and so not made a fairly obvious and repeatedly mentioned error, you would have written a basically satisfactory essay. Even as it stands it's ok.

Marty Murray wrote:Hi Meera.

One thing that does jump out is that what you wrote does not exactly match the prompt. You talk of ChromeChannel as a potential web advertiser whereas actually ChromeChannel is a purveyor of web advertising.

I really have no idea how I misconstrued this point. This indeed looks like a grave mistake.[/quote]

Mechmeera wrote:I really have no idea how I misconstrued this point. This indeed looks like a grave mistake.

Reading comprehension is mission critical.