Two vendors tell you the same thing about Acme Corp’s intent this week. You assume they have independent signals. They do not. They are both reselling the same publisher co-op feed, with slightly different surge thresholds layered on top. That is most of the intent data market.
I am George, founder of Leadpipe. We built our own intent network because we needed signals that nobody else on the buyer’s short list had access to. This post breaks down the difference between proprietary and licensed intent, and why it matters more in 2026 than it did two years ago.
The answer up front
Licensed intent data is bought wholesale from a shared publisher cooperative, usually Bombora’s B2B Data Co-op or a similar network, then rebranded and resold by dozens of platforms. Proprietary intent data is collected through a pixel network or first-party infrastructure that the vendor owns end to end. The first commoditizes. The second differentiates.
When every ABM platform you talk to is surfacing the same “surging accounts,” that is the licensing model giving everyone the same answer. When an intent feed shows you a named person researching your category on a site your competitors cannot see into, that is proprietary.
The trend in one paragraph
The B2B intent market grew up licensed. A small number of data co-ops collected consumption signals from thousands of publisher sites and sold wholesale feeds to every platform that wanted an intent product. In 2026, the licensed model is failing in two directions at once: commoditization at the top, where every customer has the same signal, and underperformance at the bottom, where the signal is account-level and nobody can figure out who at the account to actually contact. Proprietary, person-level networks are replacing licensed feeds because they fix both problems simultaneously.
Three forces driving the trend
Force 1: Every licensed feed surfaces the same accounts
The Bombora B2B Data Co-op is the dominant source of licensed B2B intent. It powers intent products at a long list of platforms. Some of them are direct competitors to each other. All of them are looking at the same underlying consumption signal with slightly different weights and dressings.
If you are paying $25K-$55K/year for intent data at two or three vendors, you are usually paying for the same feed twice. The surge on Acme Corp that one vendor flags is the same surge another flags, because both are reading the same co-op output. The differentiation is mostly in the UI and the score normalization.
That is fine if you only buy one intent product. It is absurd if you buy three. And it guarantees your competitors have the exact same account list you do.
Force 2: Account-level intent is not actionable on its own
The licensed co-op model was built on IP-to-company resolution. That architecture produces account-level signals by design. It cannot produce person-level signals, because the identity resolution is happening at the company layer, not the person layer.
So when your vendor hands you a surging account, your SDR still has to guess who at that account is actually doing the research. I covered this at length in our intent data only shows companies. The short version: a 2,400-person company with a “high intent” score leaves you with a LinkedIn search and a coin flip. Most SDRs flip the coin wrong.
Proprietary networks, when they are built pixel-first instead of IP-first, can resolve the named individual. That is not a UX upgrade. It is a different architectural choice made at the network layer.
Force 3: Cookie deprecation broke licensed attribution
Third-party cookies are not fully gone in 2026, but the rails are weaker every quarter. Safari and Firefox have been blocking by default for years. Chrome’s tracking protections keep tightening. The licensed co-op model depends on a lot of cross-site third-party cookie reconciliation to attribute content consumption back to companies.
Proprietary pixel networks collected with first-party consent, with deterministic matching, keep working. The vendors that built their identity resolution on first-party signals are fine. The vendors that licensed a feed built on a decaying cookie substrate are in trouble.
What replaces lookalike audiences after cookie deprecation is a related problem. The answer in both cases is the same: first-party signal, deterministic matching, owned infrastructure.
Side by side
| Dimension | Licensed intent (Bombora, most ABM platforms) | Proprietary intent (Orbit, Leadpipe) |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Publisher co-op wholesale feed | Owned pixel network, 5M sites |
| Resolution unit | Company (IP-to-company) | Person (deterministic identity graph) |
| Refresh cadence | Weekly batch, sometimes daily | 24-hour refresh, real-time webhooks |
| Overlap with competitors | High, everyone buys the same feed | None, the network is proprietary |
| Cookie dependency | Medium to high | Low, first-party matched |
| Cost | $25-55K/yr typical | Included in Leadpipe plans from $147/mo |
| Actionable without guesswork | No, SDR guesses the person | Yes, person is named |
| Works for small teams | No, enterprise procurement | Yes, self-serve |
Signal overlap with your competitors (rough estimate):
Licensed co-op feeds: ████████████████ ~80% overlap with any given competitor
Proprietary pixel networks: █ ~5% overlap, because the network is ownedWhen teams compare account lists from a Bombora-based feed against a proprietary network like Orbit on the same ICP filter, the overlap is consistently low: each surfaces accounts the other does not, with the proprietary feed weighted toward person-level signals the licensed feed cannot produce at all.
What “proprietary” actually means in practice
Words like “first-party” and “proprietary” get abused. Here is how I evaluate a vendor claim:
- Do they own the pixel? If they run their own pixel network, they can control what is collected and how identity is resolved. If they license a feed, they cannot.
- Do they resolve to a person? Account-level resolution is a giveaway that the underlying signal is IP-based, which means it is probably licensed or co-op sourced.
- What is the refresh cadence? Daily refresh means the pipeline from signal to dashboard is owned end to end. Weekly or monthly batch means there is a licensor in between.
- Can they tell you the topic and the specific page? Generic surge scores are downstream aggregates. Proprietary networks can return the actual page someone read and the actual topic.
- Do they have a cost that looks like infrastructure, not enterprise software? Licensed feeds are priced like rights, because they are. Proprietary data, when the infrastructure is built, scales to per-identification pricing.
Orbit meets all five. 60B signals across 5M websites, 24-hour refresh, person-level output, topic-specific, priced as part of Leadpipe plans. That is the architecture we built, and it is why the answers it produces do not look like Bombora’s. For a deeper walkthrough, see person-level intent data: how it works.
The math of proprietary vs licensed
Here is a practical comparison. Same theoretical pipeline target, two architectures.
Licensed intent, account-level workflow:
- 300 surging accounts per month from your intent vendor
- SDR picks 5-10 contacts per account from LinkedIn = 1,500-3,000 contacts
- 1-3% reply rate on cold outreach to guessed contacts = 15-90 replies
- 30-50% of replies convert to meetings = 5-45 meetings
- Intent vendor cost: $25-40K/year, plus SDR time per account
Proprietary, person-level workflow:
- 500-1,500 named in-market people per month, already matched to person-level contact data
- No LinkedIn guessing. The person is the signal.
- 15-25% reply rate on warm, contextual outreach
- 40-50% of replies convert to meetings
- Leadpipe + Orbit cost: $147-$599/month, no enterprise contract, no prepayment
The cost-per-meeting gap is not 20%. It is an order of magnitude. And the deal quality tends to be better on the proprietary side because the contact was the person actually doing the research, not a guess.
What this means for your 2026 and 2027
If you are renewing a licensed-feed intent contract this year, three questions to ask yourself and the vendor:
- How much of this signal overlaps with my competitors who buy from the same co-op?
- What is the person-level resolution rate, not the account-level surge rate?
- What happens to this signal as third-party cookie enforcement tightens over the next 18 months?
If the vendor cannot answer those cleanly, the renewal is probably not worth what it was two years ago. And if you are a company without a current intent vendor and you are about to buy one, do not start with a licensed feed. Start proprietary, start person-level, and layer the licensed stuff in later only if you find a gap.
This is the same reason we built Orbit instead of reselling someone else’s intent. Licensed intent is a commodity with a shrinking half-life. Proprietary intent, matched at the person level, is closer to infrastructure, and it compounds as the network grows.
For context on the broader shift from database-first to intent-first architecture, see midbound replacing cold outreach data and we bought ZoomInfo, no ROI.
Orbit is the proprietary alternative to licensed intent co-ops: 5M-site pixel network, 24-hour refresh, person-level output, no Bombora dependency. Compare Orbit to your current feed →
