Admob is a mobile advertising company I’ve been using for the last six months.  It is the Adsense of mobile internet.  Admob typically only approves publishers that have a mobile-compatible website (like this for example).  Admob was recently acquired by Google.  The FTC is now asking for more details on the acquisition, as Google is starting to become more and more suspicious of monopolizing the mobile advertising industry.

Some other .mobi Advertising companies include:

• Third Screen Media - http://www.thirdscreenmedia.com/
• AdMob – http://www.admob.com
• Google AdSense - http://google.com/adsense
• Jumptap - http://jumptap.com/
• InMobi - http://inmobi.com/
• Unanimis - http://www.unanimis.co.uk/

The reason I’m taking time out of my life to flame Linkshare is because of their complete disregard for the quality of their system in its entirety.  It’s a mouthful, but I can write something negative about everything Linkshare does… they’re amateurs, simply put.  

Linkshare, a United Kingdom company, can be compared to the United States based Commission Junction (cj.com) only for its functionality.  CJ far surpasses Linkshare’s ability to unite both publisher and advertiser successfully.  Linkshare has no incentive to make you, the publisher, any real money.  Linkshare’s goal is money alright, for themselves.    

#1.  Linkshare.com is down as of this post.  I figured this is a good start to my list.

#2. Linkshare does not respond to support tickets.  What?  Did the postman lose my letter in your online support ticket system?  Of course when I asked them questions regarding my tax information (i.e money), they respond in under an hour.  

#3. Almost all of Linkshare’s advertisers are second teir, meaning less likely to bring YOU in any profit.  YOU ARE A TOOL TO LINKSHARE!

#4. Linkshare’s portal for tracking and managing publisher sales is complete dog-sh*t.  Let me show you this screenshot: (oh… wait, their site is currently “performing maintenance”).  I was going to show how their dashboard does not display at all using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.  Really? IE only?

This rant is a result of many, many months of using Linkshare actively, earning money along the way.  I’m still not happy, Linkshare does a poor job of handling their clients, both advertisers and publishers.  Commission Junction still needs a nosejob or two, but not compared to Linkshare who looks like they just got out of a 30-car pile up on an icy bridge.

In order to make this post qualify for the subject of this blog (SEO/SEM marketing), I should mention that funny videos are great link bait for your website. Link bait refers to content that most web publishers or bloggers would want to link to you. Everybody loves to laugh, which is why CollegeHumor.com has such high link authority, page rank, and rank highly for most competitive keyword terms. I’m not talking about simply embedding funny videos into your website, but making your own. It takes time, but it has a high success rate.