According to the data collected by Nielsen Online and compiled by the Magazine Publishers of America, the top 320 magazine Web sites in the United States had an average of 67.5 million unique visitors per month during the fourth quarter last year, an 8.1 percent growth from the same period in 2006.

This increase is even faster than the Internet overall, where the total U.S. online population rose 2.4 percent in 2007.

In addition, magazine Web sites reached almost 42 percent of the total U.S. online population of about 160 million in the fourth quarter, up 7.1 percent over 2006's reach.

These users generated 434.4 million visits in the fourth quarter, up 12.3 percent, and spent 1.78 billion minutes per month on average, up 5.5 percent.

Magazine Web sites even beat newspapers sites in terms of monthly unique visitors – the total unique audience for newspaper Web sites increased 9 percent in the fourth quarter to an average 62.8 million per month, according to Media Post.

The data also show that 39 percent of all active online users visited newspaper sites during the fourth quarter, which generated over 3 billion impressions, up 7.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006.