• by Wayne Friedman , February 24, 2015

A little more than half of all premium long-form and live TV content comes through TV Everywhere-approved, advertising-based digital sites, according to a new report.

FreeWheel, a Comcast-owned video advertising tech company, says 56% of all “video ad views on long-form and live content now come from behind authentication walls.” This is a near sixfold increase over a year ago.

Freewheel says traditional TV programmers increasingly are controlling more of their premium advertising inventory.

Now just 3.3% of all their digital inventory -- video ad views -- comes through digital advertising networks and exchanges. This is down from 4.6% in the third quarter of 2014, and lower than the 5.0% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

The report says that digital video ad completion rates for long-form content (20 minutes or more in duration) -- virtually all coming from premium TV shows -- were at a 92% rate for the fourth quarter -- with mid-form content (5 to 20 minutes) at 72% and short-form (0 to 5 minutes) content at 70%.

A trend toward more digital video ads in “mid-roll” digital ad breaks reversed slightly. The fourth quarter of 2014 averaged 3.9 ads per break -- at 93 seconds. This is down from 4.0 ads, 101 seconds in duration, for the fourth quarter of  2013.

Looking specifically at programming genres: First-run broadcast shows witnessed a 67% increase in the fourth quarter of 2014 versus the year-ago period -- with viewing up 297% year-over-year, driven mostly by sports and news content.