U.S. Hispanics Flocking To The Web

It's taken awhile, but U.S. Hispanics are increasingly flocking to the Internet, and their audience growth is outpacing the total U.S. online population growth by 50%, according to report by analysts with ComScore.

The market research firm, which specializes in measuring the digital world and digital marketing trends, said the Hispanic online population reached 20.3 million visitors in February. That number -- a record -- represents 11% of the entire U.S. Internet market.

ComScore said the Hispanic Internet audience ran ahead of the total U.S. online population in several online audience categories, including number of visitors, time spent, and pages consumer.

"It's well known that the Hispanic market is a growing and increasingly important segment to advertisers and marketers," said Jack Flanagan, ComScore Media Metrix executive VP, in a statement. "Any business attempting to effectively reach this segment needs to understand the behavior of the U.S. Hispanic online consumer."

The 20.3 million Hispanics who visited the Internet in February represented an increase of 6% over the like period in the previous year as the Hispanic audience surged in the amount of time spent and pages consumed on the Internet. "The total amount of time spent online by Hispanics increased 6.9% in 2009 -- 3.9 times faster than the total U.S. online population," ComScore said.

What attracted them most to the Internet?

ComScore said "community" and "teens" categories drew the most attention by Hispanics, with those categories accounting for a total of 18% of time spent online. Other key categories were gaming with 13%, radio, 13%; multimedia, 12%; discussion/chat, 11%; instant messaging, 11%; and music, 11%.

"Though U.S. Hispanics are less engaged Internet users on average," said Flanagan, "they do show a predilection for communication and entertainment online."

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