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'Draw Something' will start including brands among draw-able items

'Draw Something' will start including brands among draw-able items

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Zynga's looking to further monetize Draw Something by further integrating ads into the game — the company is reportedly selling advertisers the option to include their branded terms in the core gameplay experience

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Draw Something Android
Draw Something Android

Zynga's looking to further monetize Draw Something by further integrating ads into the game — the company is reportedly selling advertisers the option to include their branded terms in the core gameplay experience. Typically, Draw Something lets players pick from one of three words to draw and have their opponent guess, and now advertisers can have their branded term be one of the options. According to an AdAge report, the NHL was one of the first advertisers to buy hockey-related terms; the league is making the game social by encouraging players to share their drawings with the #DrawNHL hashtag on Twitter and by posting selections on a Pinterest board.

While no other brands were mentioned as Draw Something advertisers, this new ad product apparently came up from Zynga testing popular brand terms like Nike, KFC, and Doritos in the game to see how players responded — so far, it appears there hasn't been much negative backlash. According to former OMGPOP CEO and current VP of Zynga mobile Dan Porter, "people loved to draw the Colonel and bags of Doritos." It's not yet clear if these in-game brand terms will roll out to the paid version of the app as well as the free one, but it wouldn't surprise us to see all players given the option to draw a bag of chips or pair of sneakers soon.