Wireless carrier Verizon is also in the market for eyeballs

Verizon has long been known as a home phone and wireless service provider. But it's evolving to make more money by tracking what we watch and read on our phones. Magna Global, a unit of advertising firm IPG, predicts that digital media ad sales will grow 62 percent in 2015 on mobile. So Verizon is preparing its next act by beefing up its advertising and media business. It spent $4.4 billion earlier in 2015 to snap up AOL, which runs a digital-ad business as well as big Internet sites such asTechCrunch and the Huffington Post. It has also started tracking its mobile users' Internet surfing and other online behavior via controversial identifying code called "supercookies."

Verizon's traditional business is still doing just fine. The New York company said that third-quarter revenue rose 5 percent to $33.2 billion, while net income climbed 9.9 percent to $4.17 billion. That makes mobile ads and video "an investment in the future," as eMarketer analyst Martín Utreras puts it, one that for now remains a small part of Verizon. The company is the country's biggest wireless carrier and sells phone, Internet and TV service to millions of homes and businesses. It doesn't break out advertising revenues.