Advertising spending on media outlets that reach African-American consumers totaled almost $2.3 billion from October 2006 to September 2007, according to The Nielsen Company.

The study did not account for spending on general circulation media intended to reach African-American consumers.

More than a third of the nearly $2.3 billion went to local radio, accounting for the largest ad spending category measured, at $805 million.

Nielsen said that national cable TV had the highest ad spending growth rate over the prior one-year period, at 14.5%.

Spending on ads for syndicated TV programs with a 50% or greater composition of African-American audiences was down year over year, at $102.4 million dollars.

The Nielsen study did not include online ad spending.

Nielsen Monitor-Plus told eMarketer that spending on these media categories aimed at African-American consumers fell 4.4% from the prior one-year period.

Ad spending excluding the Internet grew at a paltry 0.5% in 2007 for the US overall, according to eMarketer.

Local radio ad spending, which accounted for such a large portion of African-American targeted media, was down 1.8% for the first three quarters of 2007 compared with the first three quarters of 2006 for the US as a whole, according to TNS Media Intelligence data released in December 2007.

So the 4.4% dip in African-American-targeted media ad spending (excluding the Internet), although hardly insignificant in dollar terms, was not outsized as a percentage, given the sluggish growth for US media excluding the Internet and the decline in all local radio ad spending.

Media Audit has noted that African-American consumers generally spend more time with media than does the general US population.

The study, conducted from January 2006 to April 2007, found that African-Americans spent almost an hour more a day watching TV and 37 more minutes a day listening to radio than did the general population. Comparative data were not given for time spent on the Internet.

The research company did include the Internet in a measurement of the time African-American consumers spent with media compared with the general population.

The study, which examined time spent with radio, TV, newspapers, billboards and the Internet on a typical day, showed African-Americans spending an average of 692 minutes a day with these media, compared with the average of 608 minutes a day for the whole population.

Learn more about your demographic target. Read eMarketer's African Americans Online report.