Manufacturers trying new mobile advertising tactic: 'your current phone sucks'

Advertising competing products in search engine results is a concept nearly as old as internet search engines themselves, but mobile's still a relatively new, untested frontier -- and naturally, it's a frontier that phone manufacturers and carriers are ready to turn into a battlefield. Turns out both Nokia and RIM (and presumably most of the other major manufacturers) have done at least some "intercept campaigning," as it's called, where code in mobile ads is used to detect the user's device and -- if it's not a device made by the advertising manufacturer -- you're lightly chided and told you'd be better off with the other product. Carriers are doing some of this, too -- Loopt has apparently been approached by two unnamed network operators who've specifically asked the company to block in-app advertising from their competitors, which shows that these guys are being both proactive and reactive to the trend. Fight!