Apple recently announced that over 1 million iPads have been sold in the first 4 weeks of U.S. availability. With media fervor subsiding and novelty wearing off, we were interested in better understanding how iPad users are browsing the web. Listed below are three observations related to iPad traffic stats gleaned from some of our retail clients. It’s important to note that individual marketers show variations in the amount of visits from iPad browsers, so your mileage may vary.
iPad is rapidly gaining share in terms of site visits. With just a few weeks of availability, the iPad has shown rapid growth and in some cases, has overtaken more established mobile devices in terms of visits. While iPad visits make up a small proportion of total site visits (typically less than 0.5%), this fast growth shows promise. Whether this rapid growth rate can be sustained in the longer term remains to be seen.
Today, with a digital marketing industry that’s grabbing new and existing ad dollars, these words carry a truth that could solve the dominant online advertising challenge, that is how to bring the economics of targeting precision to display media. With the SEM and SEO industries maturing and their ability to grow sales naturally constrained by the limitation of consumer demand, this could be the old-guard display advertising’s missing ingredient. 
Because PM Digital has a heavy penetration of retail clients, we attend many conferences in the retail category as will be evident in this roundup. The list below takes into account that there are generally three reasons to attend trade shows: 1) networking, 2) keeping current, and 3) investigating new technologies.