Facebook has filed a patent for an ad exchange that would allow it to serve not just ads but native content on third-party sites.

US patent application #20150100431 was filed in December last year, as spotted by Business Insider, and is one of a string of related patents stretching back as far as June 2011. It describes a system for “combining [data from Facebook and third-party sources] to create an aggregated user profile for one or more users … that have a matching user identity; selecting a content item for the viewing user based on the aggregated user profile of the viewing user; and sending the selected content item for display to the viewing user.”

This isnt dissimilar to what Facebook currently offers for in-app and video ads through its Audience Network and LiveRail offerings. The key difference is that this exchange would also include sites – and that the content served up could include a video, image, article or Facebook news feed post.

The platform makes sense as an extension of Facebooks current ad strategy. The social network has been increasingly focused on leveraging its data for third-party advertising since it announced Audience Network at last years F8 conference. This patent would also give Facebook a way to spread those ambitions wider, and make the ads served even more native than before.

Its also yet another sign that Facebooks ambitions to make its social network a source of content. In the last month alone, weve seen Facebook launch a YouTube-style embeddable video player and heard rumours that the company is in talks with news publishers to put their articles directly onto its social network.

In that light, this patent could be seen not just as a challenge to other ad networks but also content recommendation platforms, such as Outbrain and Taboola, which currently perform a similar service but without the weight of user data that Facebook has at its disposal.