So perhaps internet video isn’t doing that much damage to traditional TV viewing after all. Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, the TV audience measurement body, said today that the number of TV ads viewed had increased 6 percent in the first half of this year, compared to the same time last year. Moreover, the average amount of television audiences watched from January to June was up 4 percent on last year to 2.34 hours.

Television marketing body Thinkbox, which released the BARB figures, took the increases as proof that the web catch-up services from broadcasters, such as ITV.com, Sky Player, BBC iPlayer and 4OD, is growing overall TV viewing, not reducing it. “They fulfill different needs for viewers and that they can co-exist and indeed promote each other,” Thinkbox concluded.

But Enders analyst Toby Syfret isn’t convinced. He told the FT.com that the increase in viewership comes from the switch from analogue to digital multichannel TV, and that a 0.5 percent increase came from February’s leap day. While Thinkbox CEO Tess Alps tried to spin the research as “a shaft of very bright light that cuts through any economic gloom,” and urged advertisers to take “advantage of a medium that offers proven effectiveness, increasing value, and is growing,” Syfret was more skeptical.

He noted that an “increase in supply doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in the money spent by advertisers.” He also questioned how much of an impact internet catch up services could have as overall television consumption online is currently a minuscule 1 or 2 percent, as Enders figures have it, and shouldn’t be confused by its growth figures—which are “climbing dramatically.” To put it into perspective, the total monthly views for ITV.com was 10 million, about the same audience that one episode of Coronation Street gets in a night, noted Syfret.