U.S. magazine websites increasingly popular

U.S. magazine websites reach an impressive 43.4% of the total American online population, according to data from Nielsen Online, reported in a story in Folio:. That is up from 40.2% in 2007.

Even more impressive is that total web audiences were up almost 12% in the first three months of 2008, compared with the same period a year earlier. According to Nielsen, which surveyed the online presence of 337 consumer magazines, they attracted an average of 70.7 million unique visitors a month in the first three months. The resulting reach represents about 23.5% of the total U.S. population of 300 million.

Time spent on the magazine websites averaged 2.3 billion minutes per month, up 16.7% from last year.

The increase for magazine Web sites is more than triple the growth rate of the overall U.S. Internet population, which grew 3.7% over the same period, the story said.