'Ad recall' measures how memorable an advertising campaign is. To provide advertisers with information about their ads' memorability, a social...
GMAT Information and Ideas : (Ideas) Questions
'Ad recall' measures how memorable an advertising campaign is. To provide advertisers with information about their ads' memorability, a social media site regularly surveys users about whether they remember ads they had recently interacted with on the site. In a study that drew on this survey data, advertising researcher Kristen Sussman and colleagues noted that different kinds of social media interactions involve different levels of cognitive engagement: commenting on or sharing a post is more cognitively demanding than is clicking on embedded links or on a 'like' button. The researchers hypothesized that interactions indicating high levels of cognitive engagement with ad content would result in relatively high levels of ad recall.
Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers' hypothesis?
Users who interacted with an ad were much more likely to do so by clicking on the ad's 'like' button than they were to interact with the ad in any other way.
Users who interacted with an ad were significantly more likely to purchase the advertised product at the time they saw the ad than were users who saw the ad but did not interact with it.
Compared with users who clicked on links in an ad, users who commented on that same ad were significantly more likely to remember seeing the ad when surveyed two days later.
Although users who shared an ad were highly likely to remember details from the ad when surveyed two days later, those same users tended to forget those details when surveyed again a week later.
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Part A: Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| 'Ad recall' measures how memorable an advertising campaign is. |
|
| To provide advertisers with information about their ads' memorability, a social media site regularly surveys users about whether they remember ads they had recently interacted with on the site. |
|
| In a study that drew on this survey data, advertising researcher Kristen Sussman and colleagues noted that different kinds of social media interactions involve different levels of cognitive engagement: |
|
| commenting on or sharing a post is more cognitively demanding than is clicking on embedded links or on a 'like' button. |
|
| The researchers hypothesized that interactions indicating high levels of cognitive engagement with ad content would result in relatively high levels of ad recall. |
|
Part B: Provide Passage Architecture & Core Elements
Main Point: Researchers hypothesized that social media interactions requiring more cognitive effort would lead to better memory of advertisements.
Argument Flow: The passage first defines ad recall and explains how it is measured, then introduces researchers who observed that different social media interactions require different amounts of mental effort. Based on this observation, they formed a hypothesis connecting higher cognitive engagement to better ad memory.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
What's being asked? Which research finding would most directly support the researchers' hypothesis
What type of answer do we need? Evidence that would confirm the connection between high cognitive engagement and high ad recall
Any limiting keywords? "Most directly support" means we need the clearest, most relevant evidence - not indirect or tangential support
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The hypothesis claims that high-cognitive-engagement interactions (commenting, sharing) lead to better ad recall than low-cognitive-engagement interactions (clicking links, like buttons)
- So the right answer should:
- Compare people who did high-engagement interactions vs. people who did low-engagement interactions
- Show that the high-engagement group had better ad recall/memory
- Provide clear, direct evidence of this difference
Users who interacted with an ad were much more likely to do so by clicking on the ad's 'like' button than they were to interact with the ad in any other way.
✗ Incorrect
- This tells us that users preferred clicking like over other interaction types but does not tell us anything about whether different interaction types led to different recall levels
Users who interacted with an ad were significantly more likely to purchase the advertised product at the time they saw the ad than were users who saw the ad but did not interact with it.
✗ Incorrect
- This compares users who interacted with ads vs. users who did not interact at all
- The hypothesis is about comparing different types of interactions, not interaction vs. no interaction
Compared with users who clicked on links in an ad, users who commented on that same ad were significantly more likely to remember seeing the ad when surveyed two days later.
✓ Correct
- Directly compares high-engagement users with lower-engagement users and shows that the high-engagement group had significantly better ad recall when surveyed
Although users who shared an ad were highly likely to remember details from the ad when surveyed two days later, those same users tended to forget those details when surveyed again a week later.
✗ Incorrect
- Only discusses users who shared ads but does not compare them to any low-engagement group
- Shows memory decline over time, which does not test the hypothesis about engagement levels