"Intent data" is data that reveals a buyer's (or group of buyers') intent to do something. Within the world of B2B, intent data shows what a buyer is interested in and, therefore, likely to buy.
70% of B2B Marketers will use third party intent data by 2022.

-Gartner

At their Core, all Intent Data starts with an Identity Graph repository (ID Graph). The ID Graph houses all identifiers that correlate with organizations and their executives.

Whether your tactic is Display, Social, or Content Syndication, leveraging an ID Graph is the core of an effective Intent or Direct Response Lead Generation Campaign.

The ID Graph collects "Executive Identifiers" like online-behavior data and interest, business titles and job changes, decision making responsibilities, and contact information such as telephone and email.

Its then critical to maintain and integrate "organization identifiers" like business addresses, company sizes, organizational changes and NAICS/SICs business segmentation.

Taking it one level deeper, is focusing on office addresses affiliated with specific departments which house your buyers. For example, when they are not working at home, IT decision makers work in the same offices. Knowing which corporate addresses and floors house the IT buyers can make all the difference between targeted success and random luck.

So, everyone claims to have a database. After all, you can search on Bing or Google and find lists of companies for almost anything you want.

However, the reality is that only data driven companies with fully baked ID Graph that collect extensive executive identifiers and leverage them are in the gold standard of demand generation and customer acquisition.