The source of your intent data determines the accuracy, latency, and privacy compliance of everything downstream.
First-Party Intent Data
What it is: Signals from your own digital properties — website visits, email clicks, product usage, form submissions.
Accuracy: Very high. You own the data and can tie it to known contacts in your CRM.
Limitations: You only see buyers who have already found you.
Third-Party Intent Data
What it is: Topic-level research signals collected across thousands of B2B websites by data aggregators.
Accuracy: Variable. Scores are inferences, not named events. False positive rates can be high.
Limitations: Often 1–2 weeks behind real events.
Open Web Signal Intelligence: A Third Category
Platforms like Meetline aggregate named events from the open web — news, press releases, job boards — and score them against your ICP. Unlike third-party intent scores, these are verifiable facts: a company either raised a Series A or it did not.