TV advertisements have a greater emotional effect on users, suggesting advertising over that medium may make a stronger impact in influencing their buying decisions, says IDC.
According to a recent Asian survey from the analyst company, some 60 percent of consumers said they perceived Internet advertisements as "informative", while TV advertisements were more enjoyable.
In a statement, IDC said online ads "suffer from being perceived as more annoying and less enjoyable than TV or print-based ads", and are "often relatively weak in prompting consumers to make a buying decision".
IDC said: "The relatively low impact on consumers' buying decisions indicates that companies may be wasting much of their resources when going online."
Cheo Ming Shen, co-founder of Asian blog advertising network, Nuffnang.com, disagreed in an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia.
Cheo said prior to starting Nuffnang.com, his e-commerce business successfully used blogs as a major portion of its advertising strategy, which resulted in "an astronomical jump in revenues".
His success with blog advertising was a contributing reason to starting Nuffnang.com later, Cheo added.
Cheo noted that Google's ad-serving engine, AdSense, was also a very successful tool for converting customers.
"With online mediums, you have a whole new level of interactivity and engagement that a standard TV commercial just cannot replicate.
"You are not dealing with static media in blogs. Blogs are conversational and dynamic. Many bloggers are influencers, and every brand manager or marketeer should have these influencers on their side. They stand to lose out if they do not engage them. Because other brands are," said Cheo.
Nuffnang.com boasts a stable of 35,000 blogs based in Singapore and Malaysia, with repeat clients such as Nokia, Citibank, Digi and Hugo Boss, among others.
Debbie Swee, market analyst at IDC Asia-Pacific's emerging technologies research arm, said in an e-mail interview advertisers should employ either medium for their respective strengths.
"[Advertisers should] match objective with ad content, format and medium to achieve the best outcome," said Swee, adding the online medium may be more suitable for advertisers who are looking to convey information or news about their products.
"Viewers are more used to seeing large chunks of text on their computer screens, as opposed to the TV," said Swee.
Claus Mortensen, IDC Asia-Pacific emerging technologies research principal, said in a statement: "Our research indicates companies will need to be very selective when they choose their online advertising approaches if they are to achieve the full potential of online campaigns--and perhaps agencies could do a better job of guiding them to choose this channel."
Perhaps online video, as a middle ground of sorts between TV and online advertising, may prove effective. IDC said almost 70 percent of respondents said they had watched video commercials on the Internet and more than 80 percent watched movie trailers online.
IDC added that humor is likely to attract more eyeballs--almost 60 percent said they would be "highly interested" in watching a commercial if it was funny.
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