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It'd be interesting to see, though, how much users notice ads that have pictures of people they know vs. how much they notice 'regular' ads that don't have familiar people in them: Facebook shows lots of pictures of friends' photos around the edges with reminders to "Get back in touch", etc. and so people have been trained to tune those out, too.

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Mashable.com uses your Facebook friends' pictures in their "Mashable on Facebook" advertisement (main page, right-hand side). It definitely draws my attention like a lightning bolt to see people I recognize out of the blue on random websites. I'd wager that there's a lot of primate-brain potential in this.

Mashable isn't responsible for that. Facebook is.

When you view any sort of "group" on Facebook, Facebook will randomly (or maybe not so randomly) show one of your friends if your friends are in that "group". Quite effective and clever.

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