Our State of Ad Signals survey (n=80) points to a familiar reality:
plenty of data, not enough signal clarity.
Average confidence in “right person, right time” targeting landed at 5.7/10—not a disaster, but not exactly a makeover moment either.
Every B2B marketer is “data-driven.”
Dashboards? Many. Tools? Abundant. But targeting still sometimes feels like picking an outfit in low lighting. So we got into the details.
The verdict: strong on the basics; lighter on the timing signals that unlock precision.
The Uncomfortable Truth:
Confidence Is… Fine, Not Fabulous
Asked whether current targeting reaches the right people at the right time, marketers averaged 5.7/10. Only 13.8% believe their strategy captures most in-market buyers; 61.2% say no, 25% aren’t sure. Alignment between paid and outbound on buyer readiness? A middling 5.0/10.
Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. Most teams still lean on broad, non-contact platform audiences (titles, company size, interests). That gets you people who look right—but not people who are ready. Right-time targeting is still the exception because the inputs are mostly static. Titles don't change week to week; buyer readiness does. As if a job title alone could tell you timing.
What goes wrong with broad audiences
- Reach ≠ readiness. Platform filters hit “Directors at SaaS companies,” but miss signals like recency/frequency of research or a buying event (e.g., renewal coming up).
- Algorithm smoothing hides waste. Audience expansion/lookalikes boost CTR but often drift away from true buying moments.
- No human handshake. Non-contact ads can’t sync with outbound; Sales emails people A/B/C while ads hit X/Y/Z.
Live footage of what happens when targeting goes wrong:
What right-time actually looks like
- Contact-level triggers (pick 2–3 to start):
- Job change of a known champion or evaluator
- Renewal-due × competitor research overlap
- High-intent web streaks (pricing/demo pages 2–3× in 14 days)
- New stakeholder joins buying committee (role added in CRM)
- Recency × frequency × context measured at the person level, then mirrored in ads and outreach: same people, same story.
Signal 101 vs. 301
What we use most to build audiences:
- Website/page engagement (77.5%)
- Firmographics (76.2%)
- CRM activity (65%)
- Ad click behavior (52.5%)
What’s underused (but timing-rich):
- Job changes (30%)
- Off-site research intent (26.2%)
When asked what actually drives pipeline, the top three were Website/SEO (48.8%), Events (45%), and Paid media (42.5%)—solid staples.
But what can you do to improve?
Start with one high-leverage signal, ship it, then layer the next.
A few plays worth starting with:
- Pick one “low-lift, high-signal” trigger. Start with what’s easiest to stand up and most telling—job changes, revived closed-lost, or new ICP hires—then push those contacts straight into ads to match sales motion.
- Ship first, then add layers. Treat this like a crawl-walk-run. Prove one signal, then layer the next (e.g., add competitor-research audiences once the job-change play is humming). Think “build the outfit, then accessorize.”
- Mirror outbound; avoid broad blasts. Target the same-named contacts your reps are multi-threading, so ads reinforce real outreach. Broad, non-contact platform audiences appear to be on target, but they rarely hit the right time.
- Make it easy to operate. Pull a simple CRM view (e.g., Salesforce report) as your input, sync to LinkedIn, and keep creative specific to the trigger (congrats + “first 90 days” for job changes; calm, value-forward copy for revived closed-lost).
- Keep score on movement, not clicks. Judge the play by stage progression, saves/expansion, and opp creation—not CTR. If it moves deals, it stays. If not, swap the layer.
What’s Actually in the Way
The blockers aren’t a lack of data—they’re plumbing and clarity:
- Tools/integrations (46.2%)
- Unsure which signals matter (43.8%)
- Data trust (38.8%)
- Too manual/time-consuming (37.5%)
- Don’t know how to activate (22.5%)
Top fix marketers want right now: More signal clarity (who’s in-market, who’s engaged).
Most teams aren’t short on data—they’re short on a repeatable way to turn existing signals into action.
Where teams stall
The gap is operational, not conceptual—no shared definition of “in-market,” fuzzy ownership, and no simple path from CRM/signal tools into ads and outreach.
Marketers hit analysis paralysis: tons of viable signals, no DRI to wire one end-to-end, so nothing ships. Broad platform audiences feel safer, but they miss timing.
What “activation” actually means
Agree on one plain-English definition (recency × depth × role), then decide who pushes which list where every time. Treat signals like a “layer cake”: stand up one trigger, route it, measure movement, then add the next.
A 30-minute unblock
- Inventory the fields you already have (CRM + any signal tool).
- Pick one high-leverage trigger (e.g., job change, revived closed-lost, new ICP hire).
- Build a simple CRM report/list as your source of truth.
- Sync that list to ads and set a single owner alert (Slack/email) for outreach.
- QA 10 records weekly; keep if it moves stages/opps, swap if it doesn’t.
Ownership beats more tooling
Make one person the DRI for each trigger (list freshness, exclusions, and delivery). Keep creative matched to the signal (e.g., “congrats + first-90-days” for job changes) so ads echo the human move.
Up at night Issues
Budgets cluster where audience quality is obvious—LinkedIn (48.6%) and Google Search (37.8%)—so sloppy lists get expensive fast. As if you could hide a weak audience in those channels.
What’s keeping marketers up at night:
- Missing pipeline targets — 33.8% (the clear #1)
- Wasting budget on low-quality leads — 20%
Spend is concentrated where precision (or the lack of it) shows instantly, so tightening signal clarity and timing isn’t nice-to-have; it’s budget insurance.
How Contact-Based Advertising helps
- Clarity over volume: identify who is researching your space or competitors not just that “someone” hit a page. That maps to the #1 marketer request for paid improvements.
- Closer to revenue: tie opportunities back to people and their research patterns, useful when “missed pipeline” is the top fear.
- Buying-committee visibility: move beyond firmographics to decision-makers and influencers, reducing waste from generic lists.
- Make competitor intent actionable: reach the specific contacts doing comparisons and respond with helpful, honest context (as in the webinar examples).
Bottom line
B2B marketers aren’t clueless; we’re just juggling A LOT.
The survey and the discussion during "State of Signals" agree: get crisp on who’s truly in-market, prioritize timing signals, and activate one shared audience at a time.
Broad audiences? Spray-and-pray advertising?
Contact-based advertising is how a 5.7 turns into steady, repeatable wins.
