These figures mean that magazine Web sites reached almost 42% of the total U.S. online population of about 160 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 7.1% over last year's reach.
These users generated 434.4 million visits in the fourth quarter--up 12.3%, while time spent increased 5.5% to an average 1.78 billion minutes per month, implying an average visit duration of just over four minutes.
In terms of unique visitors per month, magazine Web sites bested newspapers, where the total unique audience for newspaper Web sites increased 9% in the fourth quarter to an average 62.8 million per month.
These figures, also collected by Nielsen Online, show that 39% of all active Web users visited newspaper Web sites during the fourth quarter, yielding over 3 billion impressions--up 7.3% from the fourth quarter of 2006.
--Erik Sass