What’s in your list: firmographic, contact and intent data

Firmographic data describes companies: industry, employee count, revenue, location, funding stage and similar facts. It's the B2B version of demographics, and it decides which companies belong in your market in the first place.

A prospect list your team can work from needs three more layers on top. Technographic data tells you which tools a company uses. Contact data tells you who to reach there and how. Intent data tells you who's researching a purchase right now.

What is firmographic data?

Firmographics are the facts that describe a business. The fields you'll see most often:

• Industry. What the company does. Many data tools use their own industry labels. US government statistics use NAICS, the North American Industry Classification System, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes replaced the older SIC system and uses codes of up to six digits.
• Employee count. Usually a range, such as 51–200. It's the most common size filter in B2B because it's easier to find than revenue.
• Revenue. Reported for public companies, and often estimated for private ones.
• Location. Headquarters country, region and city, plus other office locations.
• Ownership and stage. Public or private, funding stage, year founded.
• Growth. How headcount has changed over time.
• Domain. The company's website, which is the cleanest key for matching records across tools.

You use firmographics to write your ideal customer profile, count your market, segment campaigns, assign territories and score how well each account fits.

Firmographic vs demographic data

Demographic data describes people: age, income, household. Firmographic data describes organizations. In B2B, the person-level fields that matter are job title, seniority and department, and those belong with contact data below.

What is technographic data?

Technographic data lists the software and services a company uses: its CRM, marketing automation, ad platforms, analytics and cloud provider.

It answers three practical questions. Does this company fit? If your product only works with HubSpot, HubSpot users fit and others don't. Is there something to replace? Accounts using a competitor are displacement targets. What should we say? Your messaging can name the tools a prospect runs instead of guessing.

Technographic data is usually inferred from public traces, such as code on a company's website, so it tends to be good for marketing and front-end tools and patchy for internal systems. Treat it as a strong hint and confirm it on the first call.

In an AdsGTM build, tech used can be part of your ICP, like the "uses HubSpot" filter in the Acme example on our homepage.

What is contact data?

Contact data covers the people at each company and how to reach them: name, job title, seniority, department, LinkedIn profile URL, work email and phone. Phones come in three kinds: direct dials, mobiles and switchboard numbers. Direct dials and mobiles are the ones reps can actually use.

Contact data goes stale faster than any other layer, because people change jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that median tenure with a current employer was 4.1 years in January 2026, and 3.0 years for workers aged 25 to 34. Every move leaves behind an email that bounces and a title that's wrong. That's why the contact records behind AdsGTM lists refresh every 14 days, and why every work email is checked with an email verifier before delivery. The B2B data accuracy guide covers verification and bounce rates.

Contact data is also where privacy law applies. The UK regulator, the ICO, says a business email address that identifies an individual is personal data, even when that person is acting in a business capacity. Company-level firmographics generally aren't. B2B data compliance explains what that means for outreach.

What is intent data?

Intent data shows who is researching a topic right now. The signals that matter are the ones that show real research: what people read on the web, how they engage with your competitors and what they search for.

Hiring and funding rounds get sold as intent too, but they only tell you something changed at a company. They don't tell you anyone is shopping for what you sell, so AdsGTM doesn't count them as intent. Intent data refreshes every 24 hours and can be backfilled up to 14 days.

You use intent to decide who sales works first and what to say when they do. The intent data guide covers sources in depth, and Sales-ready TAM covers how intent turns into a list for reps.

Firmographic vs technographic vs contact vs intent data

The first two decide who belongs in your list. Contact data makes the list reachable. Intent decides the order you work it in.

Every field in an AdsGTM master list, and how to use it

Every AdsGTM build delivers one master list, in your CRM or as a CSV. Each row is one buyer, and these are the columns.

Firmographics do their work before the first row is written. Your ICP's firmographic criteria decide which companies make it into the list at all, so every row already fits.

Here's how two rows might play out. A CMO at a 400-person SaaS company, with LinkedIn, work email and phone filled in, intent topics "Intent data" and "ABM", Sales-ready, priority A, gets a call or a tailored email from a rep this week. A growth marketing lead at a similar company with no intent topics sits in Marketing-ready at priority B and sees your ads and content first, until their account starts researching. The account scoring guide explains how fit and intent combine into the tier.

Where the data comes from

AdsGTM is part of Contactlevel and builds every list from Contactlevel's own data: 1.2 billion business contacts worldwide, with the deepest coverage in North America, then the EU and the UK. Contact records refresh every 14 days and intent signals every 24 hours.

Whoever your data comes from, ask four questions before you trust a field. How often is it refreshed? How is it verified? What does coverage look like in your regions? And is it observed or estimated? Revenue for private companies, for example, is usually an estimate. If you want the full list built for you, how AdsGTM works covers the process.