Intent Data Glossary: 66 Terms Every B2B Marketer Should Know

How to use this glossary

Terms are alphabetical and grouped by letter. Each entry is two to four sentences: what the term means, why it matters when you are buying or activating intent data, and which vendor or platform it is associated with. Where a term is a specific product name (Bombora Company Surge, G2 Buyer Intent, LinkedIn Matched Audiences) we say so and link to the source in the list at the bottom. Where a term is a platform threshold (minimum audience sizes, list limits) the figure comes from the platform's own help documentation and may change; check the cited page before building a workflow around it.

If you are new to the category, read the buyer's guide first, then use this page as a reference. For the mechanics of pushing audiences into ad platforms, see how to activate intent data in ads. For what the vendors charge, see intent data pricing.

Jump to: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · L · M · P · R · S · T · W

A

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

A B2B go-to-market strategy that treats a defined list of target accounts as the unit of marketing rather than individual leads. Intent data is used inside ABM to decide which accounts on the list to prioritize and when. Platforms such as 6sense, Demandbase and RollWorks combine account selection, intent scoring and advertising in one product; see abmplatforms.com for the category.

Account Identification

The process of resolving an anonymous web visitor or ad impression to a named company. Methods include reverse-IP lookup against business IP registries, cookie and device identity graphs, and form or CRM matches. Accuracy is highest for large companies with dedicated IP ranges and drops sharply for remote workers and small firms.

Account Scoring

A numeric or tiered rating that ranks accounts by likelihood to buy, combining fit (firmographics, technographics) and engagement (intent, web activity, email response). Most ABM platforms compute it continuously; a simpler version is a spreadsheet with weighted columns. The score decides which accounts get ads, SDR outreach or both.

Account-to-Contact Enrichment

Converting a list of surging accounts into a list of named people at those accounts, typically by title or job function. It is required before activating intent on Meta or Google, which only accept person-level identifiers. Providers include ZoomInfo, Apollo, Cognism and Clay, and activation platforms like Metadata.io (our disclosed sponsor) bundle the step.

Activation

The act of using intent data to trigger something: an ad audience, a sales alert, a workflow, or a change in account stage. Intent data with no activation path is a report nobody reads. Our activation guide covers the ad-platform mechanics channel by channel.

Audience Expansion

An ad-platform setting (LinkedIn's Audience Expansion, Meta's Advantage+ audience) that lets the platform serve to people outside your uploaded list who resemble it. For intent campaigns it should be off, because it replaces accounts that are researching with accounts that merely look similar.

Audience Sync

An automated connection that pushes a segment from an intent or ABM platform into an ad platform and keeps it updated. Bombora, G2, ZoomInfo, 6sense and Demandbase all document LinkedIn audience sync; some add Meta and Google. It replaces the manual CSV upload and is the main reason lists stay fresh.

B

B2B Data Co-op

A network of publishers that pool anonymized visitor behavior so that a data vendor can observe research activity across thousands of sites. Bombora's Data Co-op is the best-known example and the source of its Company Surge scores. Co-op scale determines how many topics and accounts a vendor can see.

Bidstream Data

Intent signals inferred from the page URLs and contextual information passed in programmatic ad requests. It is broad and cheap but noisy: it reflects where an ad could be served rather than what a reader did, and privacy rules increasingly restrict its use. Vendors differ on whether they include it; ask directly.

Bombora Company Surge

Bombora's account-level intent score, produced weekly, that indicates when a company's consumption of content on a given topic is significantly above its own baseline. Scores range from 0 to 100 with 60 and above typically treated as surging. It is licensed both directly and inside many ABM, CRM and DSP products.

Buyer Intent

Observable behavior suggesting that a person or organization is considering a purchase in a category. It ranges from weak (reading an explainer) to strong (viewing a pricing page or comparing two vendors on G2). Intent data products differ mainly in which behaviors they can see and how they weight them.

Buyer Intent Keywords

Search queries that signal commercial consideration, such as pricing, alternatives, versus comparisons, reviews and implementation questions. They are used to build Search campaigns and to configure topic taxonomies in intent tools. We maintain a categorized list on our buyer intent keywords page.

Buying Committee

The group of people at an account who influence or approve a purchase, usually spanning a champion, an economic buyer, technical evaluators and procurement. Gartner has reported committees of six to ten people for complex B2B purchases. Intent data identifies the account; targeting the committee requires role-level filters or contact enrichment.

Buying Stage

A model of how far an account has progressed toward purchase, typically labeled with stages such as Awareness, Consideration, Decision and Purchase. 6sense and Demandbase assign stages from intent and engagement signals and let campaigns change by stage. Stage models are predictions, not observed facts.

C

Company List (LinkedIn)

A LinkedIn Matched Audiences upload type that accepts up to 300,000 companies by name and domain and matches them to LinkedIn Company Pages. It is the only native company-level audience input among the major ad platforms. Audiences must reach 300 matched members before serving.

Contact-Level Intent

Intent signals attributed to an identified individual rather than an account. Sources include review-site activity with known user identity, first-party web sessions after form fill, and some vendor products such as ZoomInfo's contact-level intent. Privacy rules limit how it can be collected and shared across borders.

Contextual Targeting

Serving ads based on the content of the page being viewed rather than who is viewing it. It is a privacy-safe complement to intent targeting: place ads on pages about your category and you reach researchers without an identifier. It does not tell you which account was reached.

Cookie Deprecation

The ongoing removal of third-party cookies from browsers, complete in Safari and Firefox and repeatedly delayed in Chrome. It reduces cookie-based account identification and retargeting reach. Intent vendors have shifted toward IP, publisher-authenticated and first-party identity in response.

Custom Audience (Meta)

Meta's audience type built from advertiser-supplied data, including customer lists, website visitors, app users and engagement. Customer list Custom Audiences accept hashed email, phone and other identifiers and must contain at least 100 people from one country. There is no company-level upload, so account intent must be enriched to contacts first.

Customer Match (Google)

Google Ads' feature for uploading hashed first-party customer identifiers (email, phone, name and address) to build audiences across Search, YouTube, Gmail, Display and Demand Gen. Google's policy requires that the data be collected directly by the advertiser, which rules out uploading purchased contact lists. Lists generally need about 1,000 matched users to serve.

Custom Topic

A topic added to an intent vendor's taxonomy at a customer's request, usually because the standard taxonomy lacks a niche category or a competitor name. Bombora supports custom topics with a lead time of several weeks and sometimes a higher pricing tier. Custom topics improve precision but reduce the historical baseline available for scoring.

D

Data Clean Room

A privacy-controlled environment where two parties (for example an advertiser and a publisher or platform) match data sets without either seeing the other's raw records. Used increasingly for measuring account reach on walled gardens. Relevant to intent when matching surging accounts against a publisher's audience.

De-anonymization

Identifying the company, and sometimes the person, behind an anonymous website visit. Company-level de-anonymization via reverse IP is common and legal in most jurisdictions; person-level de-anonymization (RB2B, Warmly and others) is typically limited to the United States because of privacy law. It is the main source of first-party intent.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

Software that buys ad impressions programmatically across exchanges. Independent DSPs (The Trade Desk, StackAdapt, DV360) sell intent segments from data marketplaces; ABM platforms like 6sense and Demandbase run their own DSPs with built-in account identification. DSPs offer the widest reach for account-level intent and the loosest accuracy.

Demand Unit

Forrester's term for a buying group with a specific need, distinct from the account as a whole. A large enterprise may contain several demand units for the same category. The concept matters for intent because a surge at a 50,000-person company may belong to one division, not the whole firm.

Domain Matching

Resolving records to accounts by website domain rather than company name. Domain is the most reliable join key across intent vendors, CRMs and ad platforms because names vary ("IBM" versus "International Business Machines"). Subsidiaries and multiple domains per company still cause mismatches.

E

Engagement Score

A measure of how much an account has interacted with your own channels: site visits, email opens, ad clicks, event attendance, content downloads. It is first-party and distinct from third-party intent. ABM platforms combine both into account scores; keeping them separate in reporting shows which one is doing the work.

F

Firmographics

Descriptive attributes of a company: industry, employee count, revenue band, headquarters location, ownership type. Used to define target account lists and to filter intent output so you only see surges at accounts you could sell to. ZoomInfo, Dun & Bradstreet and Clearbit are common sources.

First-Party Intent Data

Signals collected on properties you own: website visits, pricing page views, product trials, webinar registrations, email clicks. It is the most accurate intent you can get because you observed it directly, but it only covers accounts that already found you. See our first-party versus third-party comparison.

Fit Score

A rating of how well an account matches your ideal customer profile, based on firmographics and technographics rather than behavior. Fit tells you whether you want the account; intent tells you whether the account wants you now. High fit plus high intent is the standard prioritization quadrant.

Frequency Cap

A limit on how many times one person sees an ad in a period. In intent campaigns it prevents a small surging-account audience from being served the same creative dozens of times a day. LinkedIn, Meta and most DSPs support caps; set them tighter for small audiences.

G

G2 Buyer Intent

G2's intent product, which reports which companies are viewing your product profile, your category, your competitors' profiles and comparison pages on G2.com. Signals are high-precision and bottom-of-funnel but low-volume. It is sold inside G2 vendor marketing subscriptions and integrates with LinkedIn, Salesforce, HubSpot, 6sense and Demandbase.

H

Hashed Identifiers

Personal identifiers such as email addresses converted with a one-way function (usually SHA-256) before upload so that the ad platform can match without receiving plaintext. Meta and Google hash lists automatically on upload or accept pre-hashed values. Hashing does not make purchased data compliant with platform policy.

I

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

A description of the accounts most likely to buy, succeed and renew, usually expressed in firmographic and technographic terms. The ICP defines the target account list; intent data prioritizes within it. Running intent without an ICP filter produces surge alerts on accounts you would never sell to.

Identity Graph

A database that links identifiers (cookies, device IDs, hashed emails, IP addresses) to the same person or household, and in B2B to the same employer. Data vendors and DSPs use identity graphs to turn account lists into targetable segments. Coverage and accuracy vary and are rarely audited.

Identity Resolution

The process of using an identity graph to unify signals from different sources into a single person or account record. In intent data it connects a Bombora surge, a G2 page view, a website visit and a CRM contact into one account timeline. It is the plumbing that makes cross-source scoring possible.

Intent Data

Behavioral information indicating that an organization or person is researching a topic, product category or vendor. It is collected from publisher networks, review sites, search, and first-party properties, and delivered as scores, topics and account lists. Buyers use it to decide who to advertise to and who to call first.

Intent Data Provider

A vendor that collects and sells intent signals, as opposed to a platform that consumes them. Bombora, G2, TrustRadius, Intentsify and Foundry are providers; 6sense, Demandbase and ZoomInfo both collect and consume. Metadata.io (sponsor) is a consumer and activation layer, not a provider. bestintentdataproviders.com reviews the provider category.

Intent Score

A number summarizing an account's research intensity on a topic or set of topics in a period. Vendors scale differently (Bombora 0 to 100, others use tiers) and the score is relative to the account's own baseline, so a score of 70 at two accounts does not mean equal activity. Thresholds should be calibrated per topic.

Intent Threshold

The score or condition an account must exceed before it is treated as surging and passed to activation. Set too low and audiences fill with noise; set too high and they fall below platform minimums. Most teams start at a vendor default and tune per topic over a quarter.

Intent Topic

A subject in a vendor's taxonomy against which research behavior is measured, such as "account-based marketing" or "SOC 2 compliance." Bombora's taxonomy contains over 20,000 topics; other vendors use smaller or custom sets. Topic selection is the single biggest determinant of signal quality.

IP-to-Account Mapping

Associating an IP address with a company by matching it to registered business IP ranges. It is the oldest form of account identification and still underlies most ABM display advertising. Accuracy has declined with remote work and carrier-grade NAT, so vendors combine it with other signals.

J

Job Function Targeting

Ad-platform filters that narrow an audience to roles such as Marketing, Engineering or Finance. On LinkedIn it is the standard way to reach a buying committee inside a surging account rather than every employee. Meta and Google lack reliable B2B job filters, which is why they need contact-level lists.

L

Lookalike Audience

An ad-platform audience built from people who resemble a source list on the platform's own attributes. Lookalikes from an intent list find demographically similar people, not people who are researching, so they dilute the point of intent targeting. Use them for prospecting, not for intent campaigns.

M

Matched Audiences (LinkedIn)

LinkedIn Campaign Manager's family of custom audience types: company lists, contact lists, website retargeting, video and Lead Gen Form engagement, and lookalikes (now Predictive Audiences). Company and contact lists are the vehicle for intent activation. Audiences need 300 matched members to serve.

Match Rate

The percentage of records in an uploaded list that the ad platform could link to a user or company. LinkedIn company lists match well on domain; Meta and Google match rates on business emails are often low because accounts are registered with personal addresses. Match rate determines whether you clear minimum audience sizes.

Minimum Audience Size

The smallest matched audience an ad platform will serve to: 300 members on LinkedIn, 100 people per country on Meta, about 1,000 users for Google Customer Match. Intent audiences from tight target lists frequently fall below these floors. Pooling several weeks of surges or adding contacts per account are the usual fixes.

Multi-Touch Attribution

A measurement model that distributes credit for a conversion across several marketing touches rather than only the first or last. Intent-driven ad programs use it to show that impressions on surging accounts preceded opportunities. Account-level attribution is harder than lead-level because touches happen across many people.

P

Predictive Analytics

Models that estimate future outcomes, such as which accounts will open an opportunity in the next 90 days, from historical patterns in fit, engagement and intent data. 6sense and Demandbase market this heavily. The models are only as good as the closed-won history they are trained on.

Programmatic Advertising

Automated buying of ad impressions through real-time auctions on exchanges, executed via a DSP. It is the delivery mechanism for ABM display and the channel where Bombora and other intent segments are most widely available. Reach is broad; precision depends on the identity method behind the segment.

Publisher Network

The set of websites whose visitor behavior an intent vendor can observe, either through a co-op agreement or a tag. Bombora cites thousands of B2B sites in its Data Co-op; smaller vendors observe fewer. Ask any vendor how many publishers it sees and whether the data is consented and first-party to the publisher.

R

Retargeting

Serving ads to people who previously visited your website or engaged with your content. Combined with account identification, it becomes account retargeting: showing ads to visitors from target or surging accounts. It is the highest-precision, lowest-reach form of intent activation.

Reverse ETL

Tools (Hightouch, Census and similar) that sync data from a warehouse into operational systems such as CRMs and ad platforms. Teams that store intent data in Snowflake or BigQuery use reverse ETL to push audiences to LinkedIn, Meta and Google on a schedule without a dedicated ABM platform.

Reverse IP Lookup

Querying a database of IP address ranges to find the organization that owns the address a visitor came from. It powers company-level de-anonymization tools and ABM display targeting. It cannot identify individuals and is unreliable for visitors on home, mobile or VPN connections.

S

Sales Alert

A notification, usually in Slack, email or the CRM, that an account has crossed an intent or engagement threshold and warrants outreach. Alerts are the main sales-side activation of intent data. Their value depends on including the topic, the signal source and a suggested action, not just the account name.

Second-Party Intent Data

Intent signals collected first-party by another organization and shared directly with you, typically a review site or a publisher. G2 Buyer Intent and TrustRadius Intent are the standard examples: they observed the behavior on their own site and license it to vendors listed there. It is more precise than co-op data and narrower in coverage.

Segment

A saved audience definition inside an intent, ABM or ad platform, such as "target accounts in Decision stage surging on ABM software." Segments are what audience sync pushes to ad platforms. Dynamic segments update automatically as accounts enter and leave the criteria.

Signal Decay

The loss of predictive value in an intent signal as time passes. Bombora surges are computed weekly and research windows commonly last weeks, so a signal from two months ago says little about current status. Refresh cadence and audience membership duration should be set to match decay.

Suppression List

An uploaded audience used to exclude people or accounts from a campaign: current customers, open opportunities, employees, competitors. Every intent campaign should carry one. Without it, a surging existing customer gets acquisition ads and a competitor's employees see your positioning.

Surging Account

An account whose intent score on a relevant topic has risen significantly above its baseline in the current scoring period. The term comes from Bombora's Company Surge but is used generically. A surging account is a candidate for activation, not a confirmed opportunity.

T

Target Account List (TAL)

The finite set of accounts a go-to-market team has agreed to pursue, selected by ICP fit and often tiered by value. Intent data is most useful when applied to a TAL, because it answers "which of our targets is active now" rather than "who in the world is active." TAL size drives audience size and cost.

Technographics

Data about the technologies a company uses, such as its CRM, cloud provider or marketing automation platform, gathered from web tags, job postings and surveys. Used alongside firmographics to define fit and as an intent proxy when a company adopts a complementary tool. Vendors include HG Insights, BuiltWith and ZoomInfo.

Third-Party Cookie

A cookie set by a domain other than the one the user is visiting, historically used to track people across sites for retargeting and identity. Blocked by default in Safari and Firefox and being phased down in Chrome. Its decline is why intent vendors invest in IP, first-party and publisher-authenticated identity.

Third-Party Intent Data

Intent signals collected outside your own properties by a vendor observing behavior across many sites, then aggregated to account level and sold. Bombora is the canonical example. It covers accounts that have never visited you, at the cost of lower precision than first-party or second-party signals.

Topic Taxonomy

The structured list of subjects an intent vendor tracks. Bombora's exceeds 20,000 topics organized hierarchically; G2 uses its software categories; 6sense supports keywords and topics. Choosing topics that match how buyers actually research your category, rather than your own product names, is the main configuration task.

W

Website Visitor Identification

Tools that reveal which companies, and in some products which people, are visiting your website. Company-level products include Clearbit Reveal, Leadfeeder and 6sense WebID; person-level products include RB2B and Warmly, generally limited to US visitors. It is the most common entry point to first-party intent.