Gone are the days when marketers and businesses doubted whether U.S. Latinos would use the Internet en masse. Well, actually, they still doubt — but now they have some hard numbers to contend with. According to a new study by comScore, there are some 20 million Latinos online and that number is growing fast. Latinos as a user group are growing at a rate of close to 50% faster than the general population. MediaWeek reports:

In February of 2009 comScore found there to be 20.3 million U.S. Hispanic visitors on the Web, representing a surge of 5.8 percent versus February of 2008. During that same period of time the general Web population grew by 3.9 percent. A similar growth disparity was evident for engagement measures such as total minutes spent online and total page views, where Hispanics exhibited growth that was five times as fast as the general population.

While the numbers look really good, MediaWeek reports that Latinos still only make up 11% of the total online population due to late adoption of the Internet.

Via / MediaWeek