Co-op vs Bidstream Data

4 minute read
By: Joe Barron
B2B Data

Why is intent data valuable to B2B companies?

It’s simple - because it signals whether a prospect is ready to buy!

In this article, we’ll look at:

What intent data is.
How your sales team can make the best use of it.
The different types of intent data and which one brings the most value to your business.

Scroll 👇 or use the menu to begin your journey.

What is intent data?

Intent data is the measurement of web users’ behaviour (where they go and how they interact online) to predict what they do next.

It can show you whether someone from a specific company is interested in your product. Once you’ve got this information, you can act on it by reaching out to them with the most effective message. Because they’re actively researching your product or industry, you know they’ll probably be interested in talking to you.

Intent data is valuable to B2B revenue teams. It:

Makes sales teams more efficient.
Helps you get to the prospect before your competitors.
Gives salespeople an angle when they cold call.
Makes lead scoring more accurate.
Shortens the sales cycle.

It’s no surprise that intent data is the latest big thing in data-driven marketing and sales. A study by IFP found:

39% of businesses that responded spend half their marketing budget on intent data.
70% of companies that use intent data plan to spend more on it next year.
99% of companies that use intent data saw an uplift in sales or ROI.

Types of intent data

The two main types of intent data are first-party and third-party intent data. They both bring benefits to B2B salespeople and marketers.

First-party intent data

First-party intent data is information collected from your website. An example could be an IP address left by a visitor to your site. First-party data is good because it’s:

Affordable – you don’t have to pay another company to collect it for you.
Yours – as long as you stay within the law, you can use your data however you wish.
Fast – your data is up-to-the-minute and you can act on it immediately.

Third-party intent data

Third-party intent data is B2B data collected from a website that isn’t yours.

Examples include IP addresses and information from forms. It’s called third-party data because you purchase it from external data providers. Third-party data is valuable because it’s:

Convenient – the provider delivers the data, with no extra work on your part.
Broader – third-party data delivers information on more targets and more new business opportunities, filling your pipeline faster.
Insightful – it gives you a bigger picture of how your prospects are researching solutions online. It’s not confined to just one site.

Rather than pick one type of intent data, it’s more effective to take a combined approach. When you use first and third-party intent data together, you can see how your prospects and customers interact with your site. You can infiltrate new audiences who may not know about you yet.

How third-party intent data is collected

There are three ways that data providers collect third-party intent data:

Individual websites – websites can sell their data to third parties (with their users’ consent).
Co-op – publisher co-ops are groups of publishers that aggregate their data together to create a larger data set.
Bidstream – an advertising pixel records user behaviour online and shares it through ad exchanges. It then matches the behaviour to intent using keywords.

But which is more valuable to your B2B sales and marketing team?

Co-op vs bidstream – why co-op wins every time

There’s no competition. Let’s take Bombora, Cognism’s third-party intent data partner, as an example.

Compared to the other types of third-party intent data, Bombora’s is more:

Relevant – Bombora collects intent data from a network of sites like B2B publishers, user groups and review websites. They’re the places B2B buyers go to find the solutions they need.
Broad – Bombora’s B2B network is currently more than 4,000 sites strong, all highly trafficked.
Transparent –Bombora’s co-op records visitors’ behaviour only with their consent.

Bombora also offers extra features to help B2B sales and marketing teams make the most of their intent data.

For example, Bombora sets historical baselines that show how much a company would normally care about a specific topic. Then, it looks for spikes in research for this topic; this indicates greater intent.

Rather than tracking keywords, as bidstream does, Bombora tracks topics. It evaluates whether a web visit indicates intent by awarding it a relevancy score. This takes into account criteria such as:

Time spent on a page.
How quickly the user scrolls through.
Whether they reach the end.

Intent data on the Cognism platform

Cognism is the trailblazing B2B intelligence platform that’s trusted by thousands of revenue teams worldwide. Bombora is an industry leader in intent data.

It only makes sense that we work together to add a new dimension to sales intelligence.

Now, Cognism users can utilise ‘operational intent’. This means that when you see intent signals from targets or new prospects, you can:

Immediately get the account information.
Identify the buying team.
Get up-to-date contact details for the people you need to speak to, including verified emails and mobile numbers.

Armed with that kind of information, you can reach out to your prospects much earlier, much faster and with more accuracy than your competitors. They won’t stand a chance!

When you combine Cognism’s account and contact data with Bombora’s highly targeted intent data, you can make improvements in several areas of your sales and marketing operation, including:

ABM – identifying new accounts and new contacts inside your existing ones
Account prioritisation – intent data shows you which accounts are in-market and ready to buy.
Messaging – identifying which sites your prospects are spending time on can help you discover their pain points and tailor your pitches.