Intent Data

Definition

Intent data is any signal that suggests a buyer is in market. It can be something they did on your own website, something they did inside an ad platform, or something a third party observed them doing across the wider web.

The reason it exists is simple. In most B2B SaaS markets only about 3 to 5 percent of your total audience is actively looking at any given moment. Everyone else has the problem and will buy eventually, just not this quarter. Intent data is the attempt to work out which few percent are looking now, so you can spend your budget on them.

The three types

They are not equally reliable, and the difference matters.

[table]
Type | Where it comes from | How reliable | Best use
First party | Your own site, product and CRM. Pricing page visits, docs reads, repeat sessions | Highest. You observed it directly | Retargeting, sales alerts, bidding signals
Second party | A platform you advertise on. Ad engagement, document reads, video completions | High within that platform | Building warm audiences on LinkedIn and Google
Third party | A vendor watching content consumption across a publisher network | Lowest. Modelled, often company level only | Building target account lists, not triggering sales calls
[/table]

First party intent is the only kind you can fully trust, because you saw it happen. Third party intent is the kind most often oversold. It usually tells you that somebody at a company read something about your category. It rarely tells you who, and almost never tells you whether that person can buy anything.

What intent data is genuinely good at

Two jobs, and it does both well.

Narrowing a target account list. If you have 4,000 companies matching your ideal customer profile and a budget that covers 800 of them properly, intent data is a reasonable way to choose which 800 to prioritise this quarter. It does not need to be perfect to be better than alphabetical order, and it pairs naturally with the firmographic filters you are already using.

Changing the message, not just the timing. A company showing research activity around a specific problem should see a different ad from a company that has never heard of you. Intent data used to pick the message is usually more valuable than intent data used to pick the moment.

What it is not good at

It does not tell you a deal is happening. A surge in research activity at a 300 person company might be a buying committee forming. It might also be one curious engineer, a student, or a competitor. Company level intent is an average of everyone at that company, and averages hide the thing you actually care about.

It also arrives late more often than vendors suggest. By the time third party intent flags a company as in market, that company has frequently already shortlisted vendors. Much of the real research happened in the dark funnel, where nothing was recorded at all. The signal is real. The head start is smaller than the pitch implies.

Why most B2B SaaS intent data programmes underperform

Two failure modes cover nearly all of them.

The data is bought and then not connected to anything. A team buys an intent feed, gets a dashboard of accounts showing activity, and nothing downstream changes. No audience is built, no campaign is adjusted, no sales play is triggered. The subscription renews for a year before anyone notices that it never touched a single decision.

Sales calls the account cold on the back of a modelled signal. A rep is told that a company is showing intent, so they call a VP who has never heard of them and did not read anything. That call damages the account. Third party intent belongs in targeting, where a wrong guess costs a few impressions, not in outreach, where a wrong guess costs a relationship.

Intent data at a glance

• Signals that a person or company is researching your category right now.
• Three types: first party from your own properties, second party from ad platforms, third party from vendor networks.
• First party is the most reliable because you observed it directly.
• Third party is usually company level and modelled, so it suits targeting rather than outreach.
• Best used to narrow an account list and to change the message, not to prove a deal exists.
• Fails most often because it is bought and never wired into a campaign or a play.

The rule for B2B SaaS

Build your first party intent signals before you buy anyone else's.

Most companies have far more usable intent in their own systems than they realise and have never structured it. Pricing page visits, documentation reads, repeat sessions within a week, a second person from the same company arriving within a month. All of that is first party intent, it is free, and it is more accurate than anything you can buy.

Once that is in place, the ad platforms give you the second layer without a separate vendor. On LinkedIn, people who read a document ad to the end or watched most of a video are showing real intent inside a platform that knows exactly who they are, and matched audiences turn that into a targetable list. On Google, search itself is the purest intent signal that exists, which is why demand capture works.

Third party intent is the last layer, not the first, and it belongs in your account list and your audience builder rather than in a rep's call queue.

This sequence is how the demand creation to demand capture model actually runs. LinkedIn builds awareness in the accounts you chose, your own site records who starts paying attention, and Google catches them at the moment they search. Intent data is what connects those three steps into one system instead of three disconnected campaigns.

Common questions about intent data

What is intent data in B2B?

Any signal showing that a person or company is actively researching a problem or product category. It can come from your own website and product, from an advertising platform, or from a third party vendor that monitors content consumption across a network of publishers.

What is the difference between first party and third party intent data?

First party intent is behaviour you observed on your own properties, such as a pricing page visit or a repeat session. Third party intent is modelled by a vendor from activity across other websites, is usually reported at company level rather than person level, and is considerably less reliable.

Is third party intent data worth buying?

It can be, if you have a large target account list and need to prioritise part of it. It is not worth buying if you have no plan to connect it to a campaign or a sales play, and it should not be used to trigger cold calls, because the signal rarely identifies the actual person who was researching.

How do you use intent data in Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads?

Upload intent-flagged accounts as a company list on LinkedIn and layer job function and seniority filters on top. On Google, use first party signals such as pricing page visits as remarketing audiences and as conversion inputs, so bidding learns from real interest rather than from raw form fills.

Does intent data replace keyword targeting?

No. Search intent expressed through a keyword is the strongest and most immediate signal there is. Intent data is how you reach the buyers who have the problem but have not started searching yet, which is a different job.

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