I recently sat down with David Edwards, VP of Product, to talk about the release of Informa TechTarget Portal and why leveraging intent data, now more than ever, is an essential ingredient in your go-to-market (GTM). For the full conversation, you can check out the webinar, AI vs. Audiences: GTM Strategy and Tooling in the Attention Economy, but read on for some of the key points, including what’s new with Informa TechTarget Portal and why it matters in the age of AI-enhanced buyers’ journeys.
AI, the Attention Economy and the Buying Network
It’s a challenging time for GTM. AI has fundamentally changed the buyer research and decision-making process, and there’s no going back. One of the most tangible changes for tech vendors has been the impact on direct engagement during the early stages of buyer research. Increasingly, buyers’ initial stages of research are happening with AI, either directly in LLM-based platforms or via the subversion of search engine results with AI summaries. This means fewer opportunities for direct engagement with buyers during their journey, which results in more competition for the touchpoints that remain.
For a better perspective on the sources competing for buyers’ attention, vendors can look to the “buying network.” A term coined by Forrester, the buying network is the complex web of relationships that providers must navigate and deliver value to. Part of embracing the buying network concept is acknowledging that you cannot control what sources customers seek out.
While AI is a new resource for customers and a growing part of the network, they still depend on credible and objective sources of information as part of their buying journey. Particularly, as the B2B buying process can be high-stakes and complex, relying solely on AI to make decisions is a risky venture that most aren’t willing to stake their reputations on.
Our 2025 Media Consumption Study shows that credibility, objectivity and depth of analysis are the most important criteria the buyers consider when selecting information sources during their tech purchase process. However, vendors have limited ability to meet all those criteria based on an inherent bias toward their own brand and products, but they can leverage the other pieces of the buying network to maximize exposure to the purchaser. One element of a winning formula involves leveraging the parts of the network that have established audiences.
Established Audiences, Accessible via Informa TechTarget Portal
When it comes to having an audience, AI has marked a turning point. For brands without established audiences and communities, it will be hard or impossible to build one now, given the increased reliance on AI and the rapidly waning attention of buyers. Without an established brand, the exercise of building trust gets much harder.
When Informa TechTarget completed the merger of Informa Tech and TechTarget earlier this year, it brought together numerous established brands with sizeable audiences. The benefit of that combination is now made manifest in Informa TechTarget Portal with a 41% expansion of the intent data our customers were previously leveraging through Priority Engine. That means a lot more signals from a lot more buyers across the B2B IT landscape.
Let’s consider an industry-specific example. In the cybersecurity/infosec space, Informa TechTarget maintains DarkReading, Search Security and Cybersecurity Dive. These are all credible and trusted sources of information that cybersecurity professionals integrate into their daily reading and will also seek out for a deeper dive beyond what might be surfaced to them via AI. The result is that we’re able to look at what matters to those professionals and gauge when they have buying intent.
Your Gateway to GTM Productivity
Portal is your gateway to leveraging granular industry-wide data. Portal makes your GTM teams more efficient by providing irreplaceable intent data from active buyers who trust our brands and include them as part of their essential research. With Portal you can get the full picture of a buying group that’s currently in market. That’s going beyond what you’d be able to do with only first-party interactions with your own brand.
With one centralized location for your entire GTM team, this shared intelligence streamlines execution, accelerates speed to ROI and aligns strategies across your organization. Achieve faster delivery and deeper visibility into real buyer behavior, so GTM teams can better allocate their time and engage buyers at any stage of their journey.
Start Leveraging Intent Data Built On Trust
Getting first-party intent data is harder than ever for vendors since your content is only a fraction of what a buyer might engage with via the buying network. That’s why you need to leverage Informa TechTarget’s 50M+ permissioned audience members. Our exclusive first-party intent data is directly observed from buy-cycle content engagement, offering unmatched granularity and context. To get started, reach out and request a Portal demo today.
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