Forecast: iPad share of Net traffic to double in a year

How's this for a prediction? By the end of 2011, the iPad will generate more than 2 percent of all North American Web traffic.

That's according to Chitika, which has been tracking iPad adoption rates on its ad network (3 billion ads served monthly across more than 100,000 sites) for some time now.

As of this month, the iPad accounts for 0.83 percent of all traffic on Chitika's network, research director Daniel Ruby tells me. And at current growth rates, which have been steady since the device's launch, it should hit 2.3 percent by the end of next year. To get that metric, Ruby took the past two months' data trends for iPad growth relative to the full network's traffic and, after accounting for spikes and dips, built out a growth line for the next 12 months. And while Chitika has taken some flak in the past for inaccuracies with its iPad sales counter, Ruby says he's confident about this particular projection because he's predicting a metric Chitika can directly measure.

Said Ruby, "For the sake of perspective, the iPad is already on par with Linux in terms of Internet usage market share [in North America] and is on pace to more than double its presence by the end of 2011."