African-American Internet users surveyed spent more than one-quarter of their total media time online in October and November 2007, according to the Radio One-sponsored "Black America Study," conducted by Yankelovich.
Fully 68% of those surveyed by Yankelovich were online (compared with 71% of all Americans). More than nine out of 10 African-American teens surveyed said they used the Internet. African-Americans who lived in the South were least likely to be online; only 63% of that group used the Internet.
Two-thirds of responding African-American Internet users said they had shopped online.
Among all US Internet users in 2007, 79% were online shoppers, according to eMarketer. A 2007 Media Audit study found that African-Americans trailed other ethnicities in online buying, with just over four in 10 respondents having made an online purchase.
eMarketer predicts that well over 3 million new African-Americans will join the Internet-using population in the next three years, and that more than 61% of the US African-American population will be online by 2011.
Learn what is in store for online merchants in the fourth quarter. Read eMarketer's US Retail E-Commerce: Slower But Still Steady Growth report.