Would you trust an ad
with this face?

Ad network SocialMedia launched introduced an ad format that puts people's faces in the ads it delivers, reports ClickZ.

Faces, and sometimes names, of people in a user's social network will be dropped into ads to encourage interaction. To do this, SocialMedia scours a person's profile and analyzes his interactions with friends — data that is ultimately matched to an advertiser's preference. The strategy plays into the idea that a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than traditional ad messages.

Facebook Beacon, which published users' purchasing activity to their networks, ran afoul of privacy advocates and ultimately muzzled the ad program. But SocialMedia says its platform will not present a privacy conflict because data beyond a name and face is not disclosed, and appearing on one of its ads does not reveal any spending activity on your part; it merely suggests endorsement.

Some advertisers, including a few movie studios, have begun testing the system.