NEW YORK ? A Tribune Interactive executive at the 2012 MMA Forum said that according to a recent study the company did, some consumers are not only using a wide variety of news sources, but are also spending 25 minutes or more a day looking for news.

During the ?How Tablets are Changing the Face of Publishing? executives from Tribune Interactive and Magrid spoke about the results of a recent joint study that revealed how consumers were getting their news. Additionally, the session presented ideas with how traditional news organizations have been impacted by digital and mobile.

?This was not an insignificant number of people ?it was the largest group of people who self identified,? said Andy Vogel, senior vice president of digital and mobile at Tribune Interactive, Chicago.

Mobile reading
The study looked at consumers in both Chicago and Los Angeles to compare their news habits.

In Chicago, 77 percent of consumers customized their news experience, including personalizing content such as weather or sports teams. The main takeaway point from this statistic is that users are proactively making changes with the way that news is delivered to them, which helped Tribune Interactive know what to put in its mobile Web experience, for example.

Additionally, the study found some interesting statistics for advertisers. For lesser-known brands, there was an increase in awareness right away from consumers, showing the opportunities for advertisers to delve into mobile to reach new audiences.

For instance, Ally Bank was one of the advertisers surveyed. The company offered specific CD offers that were tracked back to results. The company saw an uptick in awareness in the first month of the study.

Similarly, a campaign for Buick?s Verano saw a 140 percent increase in brand recall within the first month of the study.

Additionally, location plays a big role for mobile ads that stick to users.

?One of the things that we?ve uncovered is that local matters, so the context of what you?re doing in terms of the wrapper that consumers see the ad experience in ? it does matter to consumers,? Mr. Vogel said.

?So they have a different experience with a national brand that tags Chicago or a national brand that tags Los Angeles versus something that is inherently local to Chicago or Los Angeles,? he said.

?We?re very focused on what matters to local consumers because we think in our markets that?s going to be very valuable for us going forward.?

When it comes to content, consumers trust local news sources. The study found a two-to-one margin that consumers prefer local news to national news based on characteristics such as credibility and trust.

Although consumers do want to personalize their news experience, they do want it to be somewhat curated to them already, showing how both news organizations and advertisers need to think with a local context.

Advertisers have the ability to target mobile consumers, but campaigns that flow across multiple mediums will be most effective in tapping into the tablet space, per the exec.

With consumers relying on multiple news sources, consumers want to be able to personalize and tailor their news experience. However, not all consumers are using all the tools available to them to make content personalized.

Grow on mobile
Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, Los Angeles also spoke during the session about how mobile has grown since the launch of Apple?s iPhone in 2007, which set fire to the smartphone market.

Unlike other industries, mobile did not have time to experiment or fail.

With the dot-com boom, many marketers believed that certain channels, such as online video, would never reach a high-enough scale to take budget money away. However, online video is exploding with more money being taken away from online traditional online budgets.

Specifically, consumers are spending more time on their tablets, meaning that advertisers are starting to take notice and want to be on the devices as well.

For instance, some research predicts that the mobile advertising industry will top 10.8 billion by 2016, up from 1.48 billion in 2011.

?The reality is that dollars have always followed consumers,? Mr. Vorhaus said.

?I do think there is a huge question about whether digital can afford traditional cost of ad sales,? he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York