Hi! Can someone please evaluate my essay? Thanks!Prompt: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.
Response:The argument endorses pay-per-click web advertising calling it "the best investment an advertiser can make". To back this claim the argument cites the example of the company MacDowell's, which halved its television advertising and doubled its web advertising eighteen months ago, and has since increased its sales by 30% and opened 40 more stores. The argument claims that MacDowell's is just one example to prove that television advertising is on its way out, and concludes that smart businesses will continue to increase their investment in pay-per-click ads. I find this argument unconvincing for several reasons.
First, while it might be true that the reduction in television advertising and increase in web advertising caused the increase in sales of MacDowell's, the argument fails to specify whether the company invested in pay-per-click ads or not. While web-advertising might be more effective than television advertising, this example can't be used to conclude that smart businesses should up their investment specifically in pay-per-click ads.
Secondly, the argument directly claims that television advertising is on its way out from this one example. It fails to consider the consumers a company wants to target. MacDowell's might be company aimed at younger to middle-aged consumers who spend a lot of their time on the web, however, a company targeting the older consumers, who don't spend little, if any, time surfing the web, would not benefit from web advertising the way MacDowell's did.
In addition, the argument fails to consider some other factors that might have led to the increase in sales of MacDowell's, for example, better product quality, decreased prices etc. that draw a consumer to the product. The argument gives the entire credit to advertising changes that MacDowell's made.
I believe the argument would become much more convincing if it specified the kind of web advertising MacDowell's invested in. It should also include statistics the targeted age groups for a particular product of a company. The argument should also address the effects of other factors that might have led to the increase in sales of MacDowell's.