A rough advert slipped in to Admob's publisher network costed money to quite few people who use iPhone application called Talking Tom Cat.

Application designed for kids was using Admob adverts to support free version and some adverts was designed to trick users/children to click and dial premium rate numbers.

Admob said: "Click-to-call ads with premium numbers are classified as age-appropriate and normally would not appear in apps for children. We will work with the app developer to block these ads if we discover they are showing."

From TheRegister;

Well, Apple made headlines again! An iPhone developer made $1,400 from adverts on his free flashlight app for iPhone 4 in it's first day! Here is the proof

It is of course no where near sustainable and novelty of iAd plays big role in this income but still  $1,400 in one day is huge money to make from adverts! I know tens of mobile web developers that would be happy with $5 income a day from their mobile site!

iAd gives %60 of  income from an advert to the developer so from a $2.00 CPC advert publisher gets $1.2. On the other side you earn between $0.01 - $0.07 per click from other mobile advertising companies such as Admob, Inmobi, Mojiva, Buzzcity, AdModa.

 As much as I am against this App hype and Apple's Walled garden approach. I can't help my self but envy!

Link to source 

There are quite few mobile ad companies around, here is the list of main ones.

Admob  is the first and the biggest mobile advertising company. Fill rate is good and has worldwide advert portfolio. Publisher support is slow and communication is very cold and in automated manner. Pays in time. Doe not accept any adult content, even keywords like hot babes are banned.

Mojiva is slowly gaining pace. Fill rate is not too bad. Support is slow and usually feels like you are not being valued as publisher. Although you eventually get your payment, their payment system is a mess. Does accept mild adult content.

Buzzcity mainly targets Asia-Pacific region. Fill rate is not too bad. Support is ok and you feel like being valued as publisher. They recently started to expand to Europe.  Payments always on time. Publisher control panel is not fancy as others and they only provide PHP and HTML Banenr ad codes. If you are using any other technology you have to write your own by reading their API docs. Accepts adult content.

Decktrade mainly targets Americas. Fill rate is quite low. Support is good. Payments are on time. does not accept adult content.

InMobi  is one of the newest on the market and used to known as mKhoj. Mainly targets Asia-Pacific region, recently started to expand in to Europe. Support is excellent. Payments always on time and publishers valued. Accepts adult content.

AdModa Fill rate is quite low. Support is good. Payments are on time. Does not accept adult content.

AdultModa Fill rate is ok. Support is good. Payments are on time. Accepts ONLY adult content. It is the only mobile pure adult advertise company i know.

Smaato is mobile ad optimization platform were they do not signup advertisers but uses other ad platforms such as Admob to display adverts on your site and pay you VERY small share (30% at the time of writing this post). Support is bad. You never get reply to any of your questions unless you are a very big publisher with huge hits! Never pays on time. Update 21/07/2010 Please see comment below from Smaato regarding my info about Smaato

SGM is a mobile adult affiliate network where you send traffic to their adult content with your affiliate id and get paid if people visiting them from your site buys content. Mainly uses Bango to charge for content. Pays on time but don't expect too much. Support is good.

Gogole Adsense Mobile has mobile advertising platform too. They recently bought Admob and it is not yet clear if they are going to merge Admob in to Adsense Mobile or vice versa.

Greystripe is not a classic mobile ad company. Like SGM they provide you with a content site where your visitors can download free ad supported games and you earn money as your visitors click in game adverts. IT is hard to generate income and as a affiliate you don't get too much return from clicks. Support is slow.

AdFonic is one of the smallest mobile ad companies. Fill rate is low. Support is slow. I was unable to find anyone got stayed with them more than a month to gather info about payments. That doesn't mean thy are bad, I simply haven't got any information.

ZestADZ is another small mobile ad company. Fill rate is low. Support is slow. Again I was unable to find anyone got stayed with them more than a month to gather info about payments. That doesn't mean thy are bad, I simply haven't got any information.

Disclaimer. Information above does not reflect my own experience but simply collection of experiences form mobile site developers i know and forums I've read over the last couple of months. I have no reference links and your experience could be totally opposite to what it's been said about these companies in this post.