The Precision Revolution
How Intent Data Transforms B2B Video Advertising from a Gamble into a Science.
The Inefficiency of Tradition
In 2025, the B2B buying journey is almost entirely unrecognizable. Buyers now complete a staggering amount of their research independently before ever engaging with a sales representative.
This self-guided journey across a vast digital landscape creates a "Dark Funnel" of anonymous activity, turning high-stakes video advertising into a costly gamble.
A Problem with a Price Tag
Targeting based on static firmographics operates on the flawed assumption that any company fitting your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is always ready to buy. This leads to staggering inefficiency and a direct hit to the bottom line.
Demand Generation
Millions in wasted ad spend, delivering expensive videos to accounts with zero current purchasing interest.
Account-Based Marketing
Struggling to accelerate pipeline when marketing efforts are misaligned with the buyer's actual timing.
Marketing Operations
A cascade of reporting headaches, trying to prove ROI for a channel with notoriously fuzzy attribution.
The Failure of "Who" vs. "When"
The core issue is a failure to distinguish between who an account is and what they are doing right now. Traditional methods broadcast messages widely, hoping to hit a relevant target by chance.
The Rise of Intent Data
Intent data represents a paradigm shift, moving the focus from static identity to dynamic behavior. It's a collection of behavioral signals that indicate an account is actively researching a solution, demonstrating a propensity to buy.
By tracking content consumption across a massive network of B2B publisher websites, review sites, and other digital properties, marketers can finally see which companies are showing a statistically significant increase in research around specific topics.
From Broadcast to Precision
This capability transforms video advertising from a blunt instrument of brand awareness into a precision tool for demand generation and ABM. Instead of broadcasting to an entire target account list, you can focus video ad spend exclusively on the subset of accounts that are actively in-market.
The integration of real-time intent data transforms B2B video advertising from a broad awareness tool into a precision instrument. Leveraging platforms like Bombora and 6sense allows marketers to achieve unprecedented efficiency and ROI by focusing video spend on in-market accounts. However, realizing this potential requires overcoming significant challenges in data activation, creative personalization, and cross-functional alignment.
The Intent Data Landscape
Understanding the source and nature of intent signals is the first step toward effective activation.
First-Party Intent Data
This is information collected directly from your owned digital properties—website activity, content engagement, and data from your CRM or marketing automation platforms. Its strength is its quality and specificity, but its limitation is a narrow scope.
Relying solely on first-party signals means missing the estimated 83% of B2B research that occurs on third-party sites.
Third-Party Intent Data
This is behavioral data aggregated from a network of external sources, like B2B publisher websites and software review sites. It tracks anonymous content consumption to identify in-market buyers long before they make direct contact.
A Tale of Two Lenses
The most sophisticated strategies combine these data types. Third-party data acts as the wide-angle lens, identifying which accounts are entering a buying cycle. First-party data then acts as the zoom lens, confirming if those in-market accounts are specifically interested in your solution.
The Concept of the "Dark Funnel"
This term refers to the extensive, anonymous research and decision-making that occurs before a buyer ever formally identifies themselves. By the time an individual becomes a "lead" in a CRM, the majority of influential decision-making has already happened.
Platforms like 6sense illuminate this activity by capturing anonymous website traffic and third-party research signals, allowing revenue teams to shift from a passive posture to a proactive one.
Advids Analyzes: The Strategic Imperative
The existence of the dark funnel is the central operational reality for B2B revenue teams in 2025. The fact that buyers complete over two-thirds of their journey anonymously means that traditional, lead-based marketing funnels are obsolete.
Failing to adapt to this reality is the single greatest threat to predictable revenue growth. Relying on form fills is like arriving at a football game in the fourth quarter and trying to claim credit for the win. Intent data provides a line of sight into the first three quarters, allowing you to shape the outcome.
The Strategic Imperative for ABM
The rise of intent data is inextricably linked to the strategic shift toward Account-Based Marketing (ABM). ABM is a focused growth strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts.
Solving the "Last-Mile Problem"
Intent data solves the core ABM challenge of prioritization. However, most third-party intent data is at the account level, while advertising targets people. This creates a "last-mile problem" where the account-level signal is insufficient for action. A successful strategy must map account signals to relevant contacts within the organization to unlock the intent's full potential.
Platform Deep Dive
Bombora and 6sense are two key players that enable intent-driven video strategies, each with a distinct approach.
Bombora Company Surge®
Bombora's approach is rooted in its proprietary Data Cooperative of over 5,000 premium B2B websites. Its core offering is the patented Company Surge® score.
A "surge" is identified when an organization's research on a specific topic spikes significantly above its historical baseline. This allows marketers to target videos about "Zero Trust Architecture" exclusively to accounts actively surging on that very topic.
6sense Predictive AI
6sense is a comprehensive Revenue AI platform. Its key differentiator is the predictive AI engine, 6AI™, which analyzes signals to not only identify intent but predict where accounts are in the buying journey.
It categorizes accounts into distinct buying stages, enabling a sophisticated, full-funnel creative strategy—from a thought leadership video for "Awareness" to a testimonial for "Decision."
Choosing the Right Platform for Your Strategy
The choice isn't about which platform is universally "better," but which is the right fit for your strategy, tech stack, and maturity. Bombora excels as a best-of-breed data source, while 6sense provides an all-in-one ABM platform with native orchestration.
Comparative Analysis: At a Glance
The "Better Together" Synergy
"With Bombora's Intent data now integrated with the rich account data and activation capabilities in 6sense, our sales and marketing team is better positioned to identify customer demand and engage with the right buyers at the right time."
- Gladys Alegre-Kimura, Head of Marketing Operations at Aruba Networks
This combined approach can lead to identifying 15% to 20% more in-market accounts.
The Data Activation Gap
The critical chasm between possessing valuable intent data and successfully deploying it within advertising platforms.
From Insight to Inaction
The most common symptom of the "Data Activation Gap" is a low audience match rate. When a list of surging domains is uploaded, platforms often only match a small fraction, leaving audiences too small for effective campaigns and undermining the entire premise of precision targeting.
Navigating the Technical Hurdles
Account-to-Contact Mismatch
Intent platforms provide a list of companies, but ad platforms like LinkedIn target people. The process of mapping domains to user profiles is often imprecise and is a primary cause of low match rates.
Data Latency
The value of an intent signal decays over time. A significant lag between detection and activation means the window of opportunity may have already closed.
Account-Level Discrepancies
Ad platforms can fail to match accounts due to simple variations in naming conventions (e.g., "HP" vs. "Hewlett-Packard") or the complex presence of parent companies and subsidiaries, requiring sophisticated data normalization.
Marketing Operations (MOPs)
Typically focuses on managing the marketing automation platform, ensuring data hygiene, and configuring direct tool integrations to bridge the gap.
Revenue Operations (RevOps)
Revenue Operations (RevOps) takes a holistic view, breaking down silos to create a unified revenue engine and operationalizing intent data across the entire company strategy.
The Advids Warning
The single biggest point of failure in intent-driven advertising is neglecting the "last-mile problem" of translating account-level data into person-level targeting. Teams invest heavily in identifying surging accounts but fail to build the operational muscle for contact enrichment. This results in chronically low match rates and wasted potential.
The Intent Signal Activation Framework
A proprietary, four-stage process for systematically transforming raw intent signals into activated, targetable audiences.
Stage 1: Signal Configuration
The foundation is the quality of the initial signal. For Bombora, this means strategic selection of 5-15 core topics and setting a Company Surge® score threshold (typically 60+). For 6sense, it's defining keyword sets (branded, competitor, category) to train predictive models.
Stage 2: Critical Contact Enrichment
This is the most critical step to overcome low match rates. The goal is to translate the account-level intent signal into a list of specific, targetable individuals by appending contacts from a third-party data provider and filtering by your target buyer persona.
Stage 3: Dynamic Audience Segmentation
With an enriched list, create strategic segments. Using Bombora, create distinct audiences for each topic cluster. With 6sense, segment by buying stage. A crucial best practice is to configure these as dynamic audiences that refresh weekly.
Stage 4: Channel Activation
Push dynamic segments to channels. For broader reach, use a Demand-Side Platform (DSP) for programmatic video and Connected TV (CTV). For LinkedIn, use native integrations but refine with LinkedIn's own filters—this two-layer approach is The Advids Way.
The Creative Personalization Barrier
Successful activation creates a new bottleneck: the ability to target with precision outpaces the ability to create relevant content.
The Pitfalls of Superficiality
Traditional video production is incompatible with dynamic advertising. It's not feasible to produce a unique video for every micro-segment. This forces a compromise: sophisticated targeting paired with generic creative, nullifying ROI. Using Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to simply insert a company name often backfires. Personalization is only effective when it is relevant.
The Advids Modular Solution
This is a strategic shift to a Modular Video Production Framework. Instead of one finished video, you create a library of pre-approved, interchangeable video "modules" that can be assembled into countless variations.
The Dynamic Video Personalization Matrix
A proprietary framework for systematically mapping video creative to intent signals, ensuring every ad is maximally relevant.
A 3-Dimensional Decision
The matrix is a decisioning tool that answers three questions for every ad impression, moving beyond simple personalization to true, context-aware communication.
Axis 1: The "Why"
Decode the intent signal. Personalize by Bombora topic (e.g., video about 'Competitive Intelligence') or by 6sense buying stage (e.g., high-level video for 'Awareness').
Axis 2: The "What"
Modify creative elements. Dynamically swap the opening hook, core message, or call-to-action from your modular library to match the signal.
Axis 3: The "Where"
Optimize for channel. A high-intent signal on LinkedIn gets a 30s square video. A top-of-funnel signal on CTV gets a 15s brand spot.
Measuring Success
The Advids Intent-Driven ROI Calculator moves beyond vanity metrics to quantify true business impact.
Efficiency Gain (Cost Savings)
The most immediate ROI comes from reducing wasted ad spend. This quantifies the value of reallocating budget from uninterested accounts to the active, in-market audience segment.
Wasted Spend Avoided =
(Total Ad Budget) × (Inactive %)
Effectiveness Gain (Revenue)
The ultimate goal is growth. This measures the impact of intent-driven video on core metrics like pipeline velocity and, for closed deals, direct Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Pipeline ROI =
(New Pipeline Value) / (Campaign Cost)
The Role of Multi-Touch Attribution
A video ad is rarely the sole driver of a conversion. A last-touch model will always undervalue top-of-funnel video. A multi-touch attribution model is essential to distribute credit across the entire journey.
Cross-Functional Alignment is Central
An intent-driven video strategy is a revenue-wide imperative, not just a marketing initiative. It hinges on deep alignment between Marketing, Sales, and RevOps, creating a shared, objective language around account priority.
Implementation Roadmap: A Phased Approach
Phase 1: Crawl (1-3 Mo)
Focus: Pilot and validate. Actions: Single channel (LinkedIn), 5-10 topics. Measure: Wasted Spend Avoided.
Phase 2: Walk (4-9 Mo)
Focus: Scale and personalize. Actions: Expand to DSPs, build modular video library. Measure: Pipeline Influence & Velocity.
Phase 3: Run (10+ Mo)
Focus: Automate and optimize. Actions: Implement DCO, integrate CTV, close sales loop. Measure: Full multi-touch attribution.
Intent in Action: Case Studies
See how leading B2B companies are applying these frameworks to drive real-world results.
Case Study: The Head of ABM (B2B SaaS)
Problem: High CPL on LinkedIn and a slow sales cycle from targeting their entire list regardless of timing.
Solution: Used Bombora for topic surges ("data compliance"), enriched the list for VPs of IT, and activated a dynamic LinkedIn audience with a modular, topic-specific video.
Outcome: Achieved a 2-3x higher click-through rate, and the sales cycle for engaged accounts was 25% shorter than the company average.
Case Study: The Director of Demand Gen (FinTech)
Problem: Needed to build brand awareness with Fortune 500 CFOs, but traditional display ads had negligible impact.
Solution: Leveraged 6sense to identify accounts in "Awareness" or "Consideration" and activated this segment for a targeted Connected TV (CTV) campaign.
Outcome: A 40% lift in website engagement from targeted accounts. Exposed accounts were 2x more likely to progress to the "Decision" stage, influencing multi-million dollar pipeline opportunities.
The Future Outlook for 2026
Measuring What Matters: Beyond ROI
Buying Committee Penetration
Tracks how many key personas within a target account have been reached. Did your video reach the CISO, the IT Director, *and* the Head of Compliance?
Self-Reported Attribution
As tracking becomes less reliable, adding a "How did you hear about us?" field to forms is critical qualitative proof.
Dark Funnel Visibility Lift
Measures the impact of your campaigns on an account's anonymous research behavior by tracking the lift in relevant topic research *after* video exposure.
Navigating Data Privacy
Deploying an intent-driven strategy globally introduces complexity. Data privacy regulations vary dramatically, and what is permissible in the US may not be in Europe or Asia.
The Advids Contrarian Take
"Better, more compliant data is what truly matters. Intent data is a compass, not a map. It tells you the general direction, but human oversight and regional expertise are non-negotiable."
The Evolving Modern Marketer
Successfully executing an intent-driven strategy requires a new skillset. The marketer of 2026 is a data strategist, a technologist, and a creative problem-solver, adept at translating quantitative signals into compelling, personalized creative narratives.
Your Blueprint for Action
The shift from broad-reach advertising to precision-timed engagement is the present-day reality of B2B marketing. The data is clear: buyers are in the dark funnel, and the vendors who meet them there with relevant content will win. Waiting for a form fill is waiting to lose. Here is a pragmatic guide to your first 90 days.
The Advids Action Plan: Your First 90 Days
Phase 1: Foundation (Days 1-30)
- ✓ Assemble Core Team (Marketing, Sales, RevOps).
- ✓ Define a small, clear Pilot Objective.
- ✓ Select 5-10 core Intent Topics from sales feedback.
- ✓ Audit and identify 2-3 existing video assets.
Phase 2: Activation (Days 31-60)
- ✓ Configure your intent signal and surge threshold.
- ✓ Build Pilot Audience using the ISAF framework.
- ✓ Launch LinkedIn campaign to your dynamic audience.
- ✓ Establish measurement baseline for ROI.
Phase 3: Analysis & Expansion (Days 61-90)
- ✓ Analyze initial performance data (CTR, etc.).
- ✓ Gather qualitative feedback from the sales team.
- ✓ Build the business case for program expansion.
This is your starting point. The journey to mastering intent-driven video advertising is one of continuous iteration, but these first deliberate steps build a foundation for a more efficient, effective, and revenue-focused future.