The short version
Third-party intent data is information about a prospect's interest in your category collected on surfaces you do not own. The traditional category leaders (Bombora, 6sense, Demandbase) collect this by tracking topic-based research across thousands of publisher sites and selling the resulting signals at enterprise prices ($15K-100K/year). But every follow of a competitor account on social media is also third-party intent data - the prospect signalled interest in your category on a public surface you do not own. The signal is usually fresher than enterprise sources (the action just happened publicly) and far more actionable (you can see exactly who took the action, named and contactable). For teams that cannot justify enterprise intent contracts, social-based third-party intent is the realistic alternative.
What third-party intent data traditionally means
Third-party intent data, as the category was defined in the late 2010s, is information about prospect research behaviour collected by a vendor across sites the buyer does not own. The two reference examples:
Bombora runs a "data co-op" of around 5,000 B2B publisher sites that share visitor research behaviour. Bombora tags articles by topic, watches who reads what, and rolls up the signals into account-level "surge" scores. If Acme Corp is suddenly reading lots of CRM articles across the co-op, Bombora flags it as in-market for CRM software - and sells that signal to CRM vendors.
6sense combines third-party research data (similar to Bombora) with anonymous IP-resolved visitor identification on the buyer's own site, plus account scoring and routing. The output is an "intent score" per account that goes into the CRM as a ranked priority list.
Both are genuinely valuable for enterprise sellers - they widen the prospect pool from "people who already came to our site" (first-party) to "people researching our category anywhere" (third-party). Both also cost $15K-100K/year and require sales motions sophisticated enough to use account-level intent signals.
Why the enterprise pricing exists (and why most teams cannot pay it)
Bombora's pricing reflects the cost structure: maintaining a 5,000-site co-op, tagging article content at scale, running the surge models, and delivering the data into Salesforce/HubSpot/Marketo workflows. That is enterprise infrastructure with enterprise overhead.
6sense and Demandbase add account-based routing, visitor identification, and ABM workflow tooling - more enterprise overhead, more enterprise pricing.
For teams under $5M ARR, this pricing is structurally impossible. A $30K/year intent contract represents 0.6% of revenue at $5M ARR; at $500K ARR it is 6%. The same data quality could be transformative at the smaller scale, but the delivery vehicle is priced for buyers ten times the size.
The new option most lead-sourcing guides have not cottoned onto yet: there is a different source of third-party intent that does not require the enterprise infrastructure - public social engagement on competitor accounts.
Following a competitor IS third-party intent data
When someone follows your competitor on X, they did something that fits the third-party intent definition perfectly. They signalled interest in your category. The action happened on a surface you do not own. The signal is fresh (it just happened publicly). And critically: it is named and contactable, not just an anonymised account-level score.
The reason this is not in the traditional "third-party intent" category is historical accident. When Bombora and 6sense defined the category, social engagement data was either inaccessible (LinkedIn locked its API) or low-signal (X follows were spammed by bots). Both of those have shifted: classification can filter bots reliably now, and social engagement has matured into a high-signal source for buyers who are active on those platforms (most B2B buyers in 2026, frankly).
The signal quality argument:
- Specificity: Bombora tells you "Acme Corp is researching CRM software" based on aggregate research at the account level. Competitor follows tell you "Sarah Chen, VP of Sales at Acme Corp, just followed your competitor" - named, contactable, specific.
- Freshness: Bombora surge scores typically lag the underlying research by days to weeks. Competitor follows can be surfaced within hours.
- Volume: Bombora's breadth wins on accounts you have never heard of. Competitor follows win on prospects who already know your category exists.
The CTGO approach to third-party intent
This is where Catch The Good Ones fits the third-party intent picture. You add the competitor's public X account (just the @handle, no API key, no integration), describe your ideal customer in plain English, and the AI classifies every new follower and engager against that profile. Bots filtered out. Daily surfacing. Every match arrives enriched with LinkedIn URL and verified email, ready to drop into your outbound stack.
The wedge against Bombora and 6sense is not "we have the same data cheaper" - the data is genuinely different. Bombora has account-level research signals across 5,000 publisher sites. CTGO has named engagement signals across however many competitor and category accounts you choose to track. Different shapes, different use cases. For most teams the trade is good: CTGO's named-and-contactable signals beat anonymous account-level scores for actual outbound conversion, even though Bombora's breadth covers prospects CTGO never sees.
Pricing reflects the difference in cost structure. CTGO starts at $5/month for one tracked account, up to $25/month for Pro with unlimited tracked accounts and bigger daily classification budgets.
Combining first-party and third-party (the modern playbook)
The strongest intent stacks combine both. First-party catches the prospects who came directly to you - the warmest but smallest pool. Third-party catches the much larger pool of prospects researching your category before they have heard of you.
A practical combination for under $25/month:
- First-party: track your own X account in CTGO. Surface and classify every new follower. These are the people who self-selected into your brand.
- Third-party: track 2-5 competitor and category-leader X accounts in CTGO. Surface and classify every new follower and engager. These are the people researching your category who have not yet found you.
Same tool, same dashboard, two different intent signal types. Together they cover most of the practical use cases that enterprise teams pay 6sense $50K/year for - at a fraction of the cost, for the specific job of "name the in-market prospects I should reach out to this week".
The takeaway
Third-party intent data is not a Bombora-exclusive category. It is any signal about prospect interest in your category collected on surfaces you do not own - which absolutely includes public social engagement on competitor accounts. The enterprise tools have the bigger data scope; the social-engagement tools have the better named-prospect signal for direct outbound. For teams that cannot justify enterprise contracts, the social route is not a downgrade - it is the right tool for the job. The fuller multi-method context is in how to source leads for outbound without a database.