What is Intent Data Provider?

According to Demand Gen Report, 70% of B2B marketers now use intent data from third-party providers in their demand generation programs, up from 28% in 2019. The rapid adoption reflects intent data's unique ability to reveal buying activity outside your own properties.

Intent data providers address a fundamental visibility gap. Your website analytics show who visits your site, but that represents a tiny fraction of the market. Intent providers reveal the 90%+ of buying activity happening elsewhere — on industry publications, competitor sites, review platforms, and search engines.

However, not all intent data is created equal. The quality, freshness, and granularity of intent signals vary dramatically between providers. Some providers offer topic-level intent ("Company X is researching CRM"), while others provide keyword-level intent ("Company X searched for Salesforce vs HubSpot"). Some deliver daily signals, others weekly batches. Evaluation criteria should include signal freshness, account identification accuracy, topic taxonomy granularity, and integration capabilities.

Intent data providers use several collection methodologies, often in combination.

**Publisher cooperatives** are the largest source of intent data. Providers like Bombora operate cooperatives of 5,000+ B2B publisher websites. Participating publishers share anonymized reader behavior data in exchange for intent insights about their own audience. When employees at Company X read multiple articles about "sales engagement platforms" across cooperative member sites, that aggregated activity generates an intent signal.

**Review site partnerships** track company research activity on platforms like G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra. When employees at a target account view product profiles, compare vendors, or read reviews in your category, that activity is captured as a high-fidelity intent signal — high fidelity because review site research indicates active evaluation, not just casual browsing.

**Bidstream data** captures advertising bid request information from programmatic ad exchanges. Each bid request contains the URL being visited, timestamp, and (anonymized) visitor information. By analyzing millions of bid requests, providers can detect when a company's employees are visiting content related to specific topics at above-normal rates.

**Search intent** monitors search query patterns through partnerships with search engines and browser extensions. This reveals what companies are actively searching for, providing keyword-level intent granularity.

**Signal processing** transforms raw behavioral data into account-level intent scores. The process includes: IP-to-company resolution (mapping anonymous activity to named accounts), topic classification (categorizing content consumption by subject), baseline comparison (detecting surges above normal activity levels), and confidence scoring (rating signal reliability based on volume and source quality).

**Delivery mechanisms** include API integration (real-time signal delivery to CRMs and engagement tools), flat file exports (batch delivery for analysis), and direct platform integrations with ABM tools, marketing automation, and sales engagement platforms.

Autobound serves as both an intent data provider and an action layer on top of intent signals. The Signal Engine monitors intent indicators from multiple sources — review sites, technology evaluations, content consumption, and competitive research — alongside 400+ other signal types. Unlike pure-play intent providers that deliver raw signals for you to interpret, Autobound translates intent data into personalized outreach that directly addresses the research activity detected.