Some advertisers offer certain

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct61% picked this

   At least some consumers who use a computer offered free of charge by advertisers for browsing the Internet spend more money on purchases from

   Why this is right

   This is very soft, safe wording, and we can support it based on the causal relationships we were told in the final sentence. The final sentence says that "it's worth it to advertisers to spend the money to give people these free consumers, because these computers lead to more precisely targeted ads, which lead to increased sales." In order for the targeted ads to lead to increased sales, that means that they are causing some purchases that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Thus, we can say that at least some of the people who agree to accepting one of these computers end up spending more money on stuff from these advertisers than they would if they hadn't accepted this computer.

   Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   61%
2. B

   Too Strong: no6% picked this

   No advertisers could offer promotions that give away computers free of charge if consumers never used those computers

   This is saying, "If a consumer isn't going to use a promotional computer to browse the internet, then no advertiser ever could offer a promotion that gives away such computers for free". This is crazy strong. Couldn't Pizza Hut have a promotion that says, "Order a large pizza for delivery, and you might find a code inside your pizza box redeemable for a free computer!" If such a promotion leads to more people ordering large pizzas, then Pizza Hut doesn't care what the contest winner does with the free computer. They can browse the internet, throw it off a roof, or just work on offline document creation all day. It's definitely possible for a company to have a promotion that involves a free computer, even if that computer is never used to browse the internet.

   6%
3. C

   Too Strong: little, if any17% picked this

   There are at least some consumers who browse the Internet using computers offered free of charge by the advertisers and who, if they did

   This is tempting, but all we know from the stimulus is that people spend more than they would have otherwise by using one of these advertising computers. We don't know that prior to using the computer they spent little, if any money on products from these advertisers. Perhaps I spend a good bit of money on Nordstrom Rack, on the regular. Then they offer me a free computer, which floods my screen with targeted ads of irresistible brand names at department store prices. It's worth it to Nordstrom Rack to give me this computer because it causes me to go from spending $100 / month at the Rack to spending $150 / month. In order for these computers to pay for themselves, they just have to increase sales enough from what the baseline spending otherwise would have been that the extra money pays for the computer. It doesn't need to be true that the people using these computers previously spent almost no money on the brands doing the advertising.

   17%
4. D

   Wrong Causal Difference-Maker14% picked this

   The advertisers would not be able to offer the computers absolutely free of charge if advertisements that accurately reflected the interests of the computers'

   In a Most Supported context, if an LR stimulus or RC passage tells us that "Because of X, Y happened", then it's pretty fair to say, "If X hadn't happened, Y wouldn't have happened". We'd rather hear such a Flip the Causal Difference-Maker answer as soft as we can, like "If X hadn't happened, Y may not / probably would not have happened". So this answer is phrased more strongly than we'd like, because it's saying, "Without the continuous ads playing on the screen, they could not offer these computers free of charge". First of all, the advertisers could potentially offer the computers even at a loss. No one said that, "if the advertisers can't make money on this deal, then they can't do it". Secondly, who said the ads need to be continuous to work? What if ads only appeared 85% of the time you were using the computer? Couldn't those ads still be enough to increase sales. But most importantly is the fact that the computer has to advertising functions: 1. play ads constantly 2. learn user's browser patterns so that advertisers can send more targeted ads The final sentence tells us that #2, not #1, is responsible for the increased sales of the users. Targeted ads, not continuous ads, are identified as the causal difference-maker that leads to increased sales. A better answer would say, "The advertisers would find it harder afford to offer these computers free of charge if the computers did not collect browsing patterns that could be turned into precisely targeted ads."

   14%
5. E

   Out of Scope: abstain1% picked this

   Consumers who use a computer offered free of charge by the advertisers can sometimes choose to abstain from having information about their

   This is lovably soft, because it's only saying sometimes, which just requires one data point. Do we have any way to support that, "in at least one case, a consumer using this type of computer can choose to abstain from having their browsing info sent off"? No, there's no text in here suggesting that users have any option to opt-out of the data collection.

   1%