Myxer claims that tough economic times are driving more and more consumers to free, ad-supported mobile content, as opposed to subscription-based models.

Myxer has surpassed 20 million users, 55 million downloads per month and 350 million mobile downloads in total since its launch, making it the largest mobile content community on the Internet. Myxer's 20 million users, made up primarily of teenagers and college-aged individuals, are now actively downloading more than 21 items per second.

"From just starting out only a few years ago, our recent milestones show there is tremendous interest in advertising-supported mobile content, as surpassing 20 million users for any business is frankly quite the achievement," said Steve Spiro, vice president of marketing for Myxer, Deerfield Beach, FL. "The 55 million downloads in the month continues to highlight the internal data we have seen.

"There is just phenomenal elasticity of demand when an item is free," he said. "We've had content providers experiment with selling an item and offering it at no charge, and there has been 30-to-100 times the number of downloads when it is free, which is great for bands or brands interested in reach.

"Our size is attracting large brand advertisers who want to benefit from our huge audience, and our ability to hyper-target and the ability to deliver a full-experience from the Web to mobile."

For example, today the Myxer home page is showcasing a Converse campaign, asking consumers to text keyword CONVERSE to short code 69937 (MYXER) to get Converse-branded mobile content, including a selection of 10 ringtones and a widget.

Converse, Journey's and Cornerstone ran the Get Out of the Garage Music Contest, which was designed to find untapped talent in the music community. The contest, held over a three month period, received 5,000 entries from all over the United States.

More consumer brands are going to be offering "brandtones" as embedded mobile content in the actual ringtone, according to Myxer.

In addition to Converse, the company has worked with McDonald's, adidas, the U.S. Army, Lowe's, Friendly's, the CW Network, Jack-in-the-Box, Universal Pictures' Fast & Furious, NBC's "The Biggest Loser" and Volkswagen.

"Advertisers have learned about us through our track record of success working with the leading interactive agencies from basic interactive display campaigns and also through innovative Web2Mobile campaigns," Mr. Spiro said. "Our national team of eight direct sales people has been instrumental in working with brands and agencies on defining our unique selling proposition.

"And frankly, the press coverage that we've received from Mobile Marketer has resulted in some good leads as well," he said.

The core demographic on the Myxer.com site is 16-34, with a slight skew to female.

There are currently more than 1.7 million products available on the ad-supported Myxer Web site, including ringtones, wallpapers, videos and games, from 100,000-plus partners and content providers.

Many of these content partners also leverage Myxer's open APIs, widgets and other services to offer mobile content directly from their own Web sites, blogs and social networking communities like Facebook and Twitter.

Myxer attributes its continued growth to a consumer trend away from expensive subscription services to free, ad-supported offerings.

"In comparison to our competition, we have been, and continue to be, the largest destination for mobile content," Mr. Spiro said. "And in the foreseeable future with the difficult economy, we believe ad-supported sites like ours will continue to gain ground on the subscription services.

"The demand for mobile content such as ringtones and wallpapers continues to soar despite the negativity that ?ringtone sales are declining,'" he said. "There are different business models in the mobile content space that will succeed and, in our particular case, we have seen very strong demand for mobile content."

Myxer works with all the major mobile ad networks and has close relationships with them. These include AdMob, Quattro Wireless, Millennial Media and 4Info.

Myxer works with the carriers in the premium content business, and the company also works directly with independent cellular retailers to promote the sales of data plans.

Targeting content providers, advertisers and consumers, Myxer's mobile platform enables the delivery of mobile content, customized Web-to-mobile ad campaigns and mobile marketing services.

Myxer recently introduced a send-to-friend feature to increase its viral spread.

"Our No. 1 source on getting the word out about Myxer is through free word of mouth from our 20 million users," Mr. Spiro said. "Our marketing efforts are focused on making sure their experience gets better and better each month with new features, fresh content and an even easier user experience.

"Our second source of new users -- again at no cost -- is from our 100,000 content partners, many of whom have MyxerTags and/or Myxer Storefront Widgets highlighting their content on their Web site, MySpace pages and other social networking sites," he said.

An example of this is the Akon shop.

"The third source is from natural search," Mr. Spiro said. "Not only have we optimized our site for SEO, but all the high-quality external links from our content partners has helped make us No. 1 on Google for ?ringtones.'

"As in the case of the consumer, we get a tremendous number of new content providers from the viral spreading of how easy our tools are to use, and the size of our audience," he said. "We also have a team of people that proactively reach out to large, medium and small content providers that want to extend their reach and make money.

"It literally takes only a few minutes to be live on Myxer, as in most cases the digital assets already exist or we can convert them quickly to mobilized content."