• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 16, 2009

The U.S. Hispanic online audience grew 50% faster than the overall Hispanic population in the last year, according to a new comScore study. The online Hispanic audience in February hit 20.3 million, up 6% from a year ago. It now accounts for 11% of the total U.S. online market.

Hispanics also outpaced the general Internet population in growth in total minutes spent online, total pages viewed and total visits. But while Hispanics make up 11% of online users, they account for only 9% of total time spent online. Entertainment and community sites are strong draws for Hispanics. The single most popular category in terms of time spent was teen community sites, which attracted 18% of Hispanics.

The rest of the top 10 categories were almost evenly divided among gaming, radio, multimedia, instant messaging, music and computer software sites. One of the reasons Hispanics may be overrepresented in entertainment categories is that most of the Spanish-language sites targeting them are entertainment-related, according to Alicia Morga, CEO of Consorte Media, a digital marketing firm focused on the Hispanic market.

"There still remains a gap in content online addressing this market -- a gap that is rapidly being filled by folks that understand that U.S. Hispanics are looking for more sites that address their needs outside that of entertainment -- like finance," she said. "FinanzasAhora.com is a site that just launched that is doing just that."

She added that within the Hispanic audience, roughly one-third prefer English-language sites, one-third go to Spanish-language sites, and the balance are bilingual -- comfortable with either language online.

Since the U.S. Hispanic population skews young, Morga said it wasn't surprising that teen-focused sites would be the top category in time spent. She noted that social networking site hi5 is among the most popular for U.S. Hispanic users. And while the online audience of 20.3 million is fast-growing, it's less than half the total U.S. Hispanic population of 43 million. "So there's definitely more room to grow," said Morga.