Intent data in 2026: where to buy it, where to make it, and what's actually worth paying for

Intent data went from competitive advantage to crowded commodity in five years. The biggest providers now sell broadly similar datasets at premium prices, and the value increasingly lives in how you assemble and act on signals — not in any single feed.

Three categories matter. Bought intent (Bombora, 6sense, ZoomInfo signals), captured intent (your own site, content, and product analytics), and observed intent (public web signals: hiring, news, social, job changes).

Bought intent is useful for category-level awareness but rarely strong enough to drive a single account-level decision. Use it as a tiebreaker, not a trigger.

Captured intent is where most teams underinvest. Your own data — anonymous site visits enriched against firmographics, ungated content downloads, repeat product visitors — is often the highest-quality signal you have, and it costs nothing extra to surface.

Observed intent is the modern unlock. AI scraping and parsing of public sources produces account-level events (a new hire in your buyer's role, a competitive product launch) that beat bought intent on freshness and specificity, often at a fraction of the cost.

Combine the three with a simple scoring model. Each signal contributes points; accounts that cross a threshold within a 30-day window get prioritised for outbound. Refresh weekly.

Avoid the temptation to act on every signal. The most common failure mode is reaching out to anyone who shows any signal — which is just spray-and-pray with better cover. The goal is fewer, sharper plays.

Measure intent-data ROI explicitly. Pipeline sourced from intent-triggered plays should be 2–4x your baseline outbound conversion within 60 days. If it isn't, the signal isn't strong enough and you should stop paying for it.