Intent Data

Intent data is third-party signal that indicates a company is researching topics related to your product. It’s collected by data providers (Bombora, G2, TechTarget, 6sense, ZoomInfo) who track aggregate web behavior across millions of business sites and surface accounts that show “surge” patterns — sudden, sustained increases in research activity around specific topics.

Intent data is a core input to ABM platforms and account scoring systems. The premise: if a company is suddenly reading a lot about lead scoring, comparing vendors, and consuming review-site content, they’re probably in-market — even if no individual contact has filled out a form on your site.

How intent data works

The most common intent data provider, Bombora, runs the “Data Co-op”: ~5,000 B2B publishers contribute anonymized clickstream data. Bombora aggregates the data, identifies spikes by topic per account (“Surge”), and licenses the resulting dataset to ABM platforms (6sense, Demandbase, Common Room, MadKudu).

Other intent sources:

• G2 intent. When a company’s employees read your G2 review page, alternatives pages, or compare you against competitors, that’s surfaced as intent. G2 sells this directly and through partners.
• TechTarget intent. B2B technology research signals from TechTarget’s media network.
• First-party intent. Your own website analytics (anonymous IP-to-company resolution via Clearbit Reveal, 6sense, Warmly, etc.).

The output is usually a list of accounts showing surge in topics relevant to your product — “lead scoring,” “ABM platform,” “HubSpot integration” — that you can target for outreach or boost in your account scoring model.

Where intent data helps

Intent data is most useful for:

• Enterprise ABM motions with named-account lists where you want to know when a target account is in-market
• Outbound prioritization when you have a large TAM and need to focus on accounts showing buying signal
• Pipeline acceleration for accounts in late-stage opportunities — intent surge signals the deal is heating up

Where intent data falls short

Intent data has real limitations that have grown over the past few years:

• Anonymous-visitor accuracy is shaky. Remote work has fragmented IP-to-company resolution. The signal is weaker than it was pre-2020.
• Topic mapping is coarse. “Lead scoring” might surge for any company evaluating any vendor in the space, not just yours. False positives are common.
• Lag. Intent data is reported with a 1–2 week delay. By the time you see the surge, the prospect may have already chosen.
• Cost. Intent data is expensive — often $20K–$60K/year for the data alone, before the platform fees that consume it. The ROI math only works at enterprise ACVs.
• Saturation. Every ABM tool is using the same Bombora dataset. The “edge” is shrinking as everyone competes for the same surge signals.

For SMB and mid-market B2B SaaS teams under $20K ACV, intent data is usually not worth the cost. Better to invest in conversion lift on the leads you already have.

First-party vs third-party intent

A useful distinction:

• First-party intent = signals from your own properties: website visits, content downloads, demo requests. Highest quality, lowest cost, but limited to people who’ve found you.
• Third-party intent = signals from outside your properties: Bombora, G2, etc. Broader coverage, but noisier and more expensive.

Most stacks blend both. Modern lead and account scoring weights first-party signals higher because they’re cleaner; third-party signals are bonus indicators of in-market timing.

Related at kenbun

kenbun focuses on first-party intent today: scoring the engagement signals from your own HubSpot data with rules that explain themselves. Third-party intent integration (Bombora, G2) is a candidate for future expansion when customer demand justifies the data licensing cost.