What Is Intent Data and Who Are the Leading Providers

In the world of B2B marketing, identifying high-intent prospects early in their decision-making journey can make or break a campaign. Traditional lead scoring and firmographics are no longer enough — modern teams are turning to intent data to uncover real-time buying signals from potential customers.

As competition intensifies, intent data providers offer a significant edge by helping companies pinpoint which accounts are actively researching their solution category. Whether you're running an ABM campaign or personalizing outreach at scale, understanding and applying intent data has become essential for any data-driven strategy.

What Is Intent Data?

At its core, intent data is behavioral information that indicates a company or individual is actively researching a product or service. This behavior typically takes place outside of your website, across digital touchpoints such as online articles, webinars, reviews, or comparison platforms.

There are three primary types of intent data:

• First-party intent data: Collected directly from your own digital properties (e.g., website visits, downloads).
• Second-party intent data: Sourced from partners or publishers who collect behavioral signals from their audiences.
• Third-party intent data: Aggregated from a broad range of sources across the open internet, often enriched through cookies, IP data, or behavioral tracking.

Common intent signals include:

• Repeated visits to product pages
• Downloading whitepapers or case studies
• Reading comparison reviews
• Attending industry webinars
• Searching for specific product features or pricing

While first-party data provides deep insight into visitors already in your funnel, third-party data expands your reach to previously unknown buyers — often in the earliest stages of their research.

How B2B Companies Use Intent Data

Intent data has become a cornerstone of modern B2B marketing and sales. By identifying prospects actively researching solutions, businesses can tailor messaging, prioritize outreach, and accelerate deal velocity.

Here’s how intent data fits into the B2B playbook:

ABM (Account-Based Marketing)

Intent signals help refine account selection and personalize outreach in ABM campaigns. Instead of targeting every account in your ICP, marketers can focus on those exhibiting relevant behaviors — a strategy known as abm intent data targeting.

Lead Prioritization

Sales teams use intent data to identify which leads are "warming up" based on recent digital activity. Integrating this data into CRMs or sales engagement platforms allows for smarter, more timely outreach.

Content Personalization

Marketing automation tools can dynamically adjust email content or landing pages based on what topics a contact has recently researched.

Advertising Efficiency

Platforms like LinkedIn or Demandbase can use intent segments to deliver more targeted display or retargeting ads — reaching prospects who are in-market now.

Product Intelligence

Some product-led teams monitor intent data to identify which features or topics are gaining interest in the market, feeding insights into roadmap decisions.

In short, B2B intent data providers empower teams to engage with the right accounts at the right time — with messaging that speaks directly to their current needs.

Top Intent Data Providers

Several vendors specialize in collecting, enriching, and delivering intent data. Each takes a different approach depending on their data sources, integrations, and ideal customer profile.

Bombora

Bombora is one of the most recognized names in third-party intent data. Its flagship product, Company Surge®, tracks content consumption trends across a large co-op of B2B publishers. It scores companies based on their spike in interest across specific topics — a valuable signal for both marketing and sales teams.

Bombora integrates with tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, LinkedIn, and more. It also partners closely with ZoomInfo, allowing users to combine contact-level enrichment with Bombora's behavioral signals.

• Focus: Mid-market to enterprise B2B
• Strengths: Large data co-op, topic granularity, ABM integration
• Keywords: bombora intent data, bombora company surge, bombora zoominfo

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a data powerhouse combining firmographics, contact data, and behavioral intent. Through its Intent product and Bombora integration, users gain insight into which companies are actively researching relevant topics.

ZoomInfo is known for its sales intelligence capabilities, which makes it especially popular with outbound SDR teams. Its real-time alerts and workflow automation help align intent signals with immediate sales actions.

• Focus: Mid-market and sales-driven teams
• Strengths: Robust contact database, CRM integrations, real-time alerts

G2

G2 is a software review platform that provides buyer intent data based on user interactions — such as viewing product profiles, comparing tools, or reading reviews.

Because G2 tracks real buyers researching real products, its signals are often seen as high-quality and lower-funnel. Companies can receive alerts when a target account reads their competitors’ pages, making it perfect for competitive displacement campaigns.

• Focus: SaaS vendors, PLG companies
• Strengths: High-fidelity signals, review-based behavior, competitor intelligence

TechTarget

TechTarget specializes in content-based intent data. It monitors in-depth engagement on niche B2B tech sites like SearchSecurity and TechRepublic, capturing highly specific research activity across IT and enterprise buyers.

Its Priority Engine product combines buyer research trends with contact-level insights, giving sales teams actionable paths into key accounts.

• Focus: Enterprise tech, cybersecurity, IT solutions
• Strengths: Topic-level precision, deep content consumption insights

Demandbase

Demandbase integrates intent data into a broader account intelligence platform. Through partnerships with Bombora and proprietary sources, Demandbase helps companies identify in-market accounts and engage them through ad targeting, email, and personalization.

Its strength lies in combining firmographics, engagement data, and buyer journeys into a single ABM-friendly dashboard.

• Focus: ABM-focused B2B orgs
• Strengths: Unified view of accounts, real-time orchestration

Limitations and Opportunities of Intent Data

While intent data is powerful, it’s not without challenges.

Common limitations:

• Incomplete signals: Many behaviors occur anonymously or outside tracked networks.
• High cost: Access to comprehensive intent platforms can be expensive, especially for SMBs.
• Third-party dependency: Most solutions rely on external data co-ops or partnerships, limiting transparency.

However, many data-driven teams now augment commercial intent data with custom behavioral data from public websites. For instance, by tracking visits to competitor pricing pages or scraping public directories, marketers can build supplemental intent profiles.

This is where automation tools like CapMonster Cloud come into play. If key sources are protected by CAPTCHA, CapMonster Cloud helps automate access — solving CAPTCHA challenges at scale and allowing your scraping or enrichment scripts to continue uninterrupted.

Some marketers combine commercial intent data with real-time signals from public websites. If those sites are protected by CAPTCHA, tools like CapMonster Cloud help automate access for data enrichment and lead profiling.

For example:

• Enrich Bombora segments with LinkedIn job changes
• Capture firm-level visits to public documentation pages
• Scrape event registrants or attendee lists

This hybrid approach — combining licensed data with open-source signals — can significantly improve the precision and timeliness of your targeting.

In a landscape defined by noise and saturation, intent data offers clarity. It enables B2B teams to align their sales and marketing strategies around what their prospects are actually doing — not just who they are.

Whether you choose Bombora for Company Surge signals, ZoomInfo for sales outreach, G2 for competitive buyer insights, or Demandbase for a full ABM stack, the key is to match the provider to your goals.

And don’t overlook the role of automation. When access to behavior-rich sources is blocked by CAPTCHA, CapMonster Cloud ensures you don’t miss out on valuable real-time signals.

By combining the right data with smart tools and processes, you’ll be well-positioned to turn interest into revenue — faster and more efficiently.

NB: Please note, the product is intended for automating tests on your own websites and sites you have legal access to.