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;

public static string GetUa(HttpRequest hr)
    {
        try
        {
            string visitorBrowser = hr.UserAgent.ToString();
            string originalBrowser = hr.ServerVariables["X-OperaMini-Phone-UA"];
            string anotherOriginalBrowser = hr.ServerVariables["X-Device-User-Agent"]; //novarra
            
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(originalBrowser))
            {
                return "OPERAMINI " + originalBrowser;
            }
            else
            {
                if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(anotherOriginalBrowser))
                {
                    return "NOVARRA " + anotherOriginalBrowser;
                }
                else
                {
                    return visitorBrowser;
                }
            }
        }
        catch
        {
            return "No UA Found";
        }
    }

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.

UPDATE: You can now download Opera Mini from App store! Apple finally approved Opera Mini for  iPhone!

Here are some screen-shots! Unfortunately it does NOT support uploading from iPhone

Opera Mini is ready for iPhone and submitted to App Store for approval. Opera put up a web page to track time it will take to get Opera Mini for iPhone to approve. As i write this post it already has been 2 days 19 hours and 41 minutes.

Here is the official video of Opera Mini for iPhone

Nokia acquired transcoding company Novarra!

"Novarra, the Internet Mobility company, provides high performance mobile internet browsers and platforms for operators, handset manufacturers and internet brands to create new services and revenue streams for smartphones, features phones and mobile broadband devices.  The solutions deliver a high quality mobile user experience for services including full rich web browsing, search, widgets, apps, video and advertising. Global, commercial deployments over eight years have proven consumer satisfaction, uptake and increased data service revenues" 

Novarra is the biggest transcoding company out there. It basically renders web pages and makes them suitable for non smart mobile phones. While doing that it does not obey transcoding specifications and hides phone capabilities, it also renders mobile web pages. Regardless your site designed for mobile phones or not it renders mobile web pages same way and usually inserts different content on top and bottom of pages. It simply hijacks your site and uses for it's own benefit.

I hope Nokia will sort Novarra out!