• by Masha Geller , February 26, 2003

If African Americans are your target audience, the Internet is a good place to find them.

Nielsen//NetRatings today reports that the African American Internet audience in the U.S. has grown to more than 10 million surfers, comprising almost 8% of the total home and work combined online population. The African American Internet population spent a total of 44 hours on the Web, initiated 42 sessions, and viewed 1,186 pages online in January 2003. In comparison, the total online population spent more than 50 hours surfing the Web, logged 52 sessions and viewed 1,444 pages last month.

BlackPlanet.com was the top online destination for African Americans. The site garnered the highest concentration of African Americans with 75% of their traffic, or 892,000 unique visitors being of African American descent. Following closely, music site Zjamz.com was the second most visited destination with a 71% concentration of African American surfers. In third, BET Interactive garnered a unique audience of 554,000 African Americans, representing 63% of the site's total traffic. Overall, the top 10 sites comprised of various cultural, entertainment and educational sites, drawing a high concentration of the African American Web audience.

"African Americans surpassing the 10 million unique visitor mark points to the continuing maturation of the online medium," said Charles Buchwalter, VP of client analytics at Nielsen//NetRatings. "And the emergence of strong sites with a high concentration of African American visitors gives marketers ample opportunities to target their messages to a qualified, growing audience."

Also, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings NetView data, nearly one-third or 32% of the African American Internet audience in the U.S. logged onto the Internet through a high-speed connection, an increase of 55% from January 2002. A factor contributing to this growth is the accessibility of high-speed bandwidth.