New Zealand’s Internet audience has grown 12% in the 12 months to April this year, according to research firm comScore (www.comscore.com).

Our number of unique Internet visitors (at home and work locations among users age 15 and older) in April 2008 was two million 161 thousand, compared to one million 937 thousand the same month last year.

Asia Pacific is the fastest growing Internet region in the world, the comScore survey says.

Some 318 million people in Asia Pacific visited Internet sites in April 2008, an increase of 14% on April 2007.

The greatest number of unique visitors was in China with 102.84 million. Japan reported the second largest audience with 55.26 million. The strongest growth was seen in India where the audience soared 27% to 28.37 million.

ComScore said that the data does not include traffic from public PCs, such as those in Internet cafés, or mobile phones and PDAs which are significant sources of internet traffic in many countries in the region.