NEW YORK — The number of ads in digital programming has risen this year, but the completion rates remain steady, says Brian Dutt, Manager of Advisory Services at FreeWheel in an interview with Beet.TV at the VideoNuze event in New York this week. Consumers see about 12 video ads per video view, up 29% from a year ago, while completion rates are constant at about 91%, according to the latest FreeWheel report on video viewing. That’s due to the rise in long-form video ads, which are up 56% year over year. “Hopefully that will push even more programmers to bring more content online,” Dutt says in this interview.

Authenticated TV viewing has also seen a dramatic spike and accounts for 14% of ad views for long-form programming, up from 5% a year ago. Overall, video viewing is growing — video views rose 20% year over year and ad views by 31%. For more insight into trends in the video ad business, check out this report.

In addition, digital programmers have reduced their dependence on syndicated programming somewhat from 75% t0 65%, while TV programmers have upped the amount from 1% to 10%, Dutt says. “Both sides are learning from the other. You need your owned-and-operated properties, but you also need to leverage the audience of partner sites to build the scale of digital video more like what you see on TV,” he says.

This segment was taped at the VideoNuze event in Manhattan earlier this week.