Marketing And Sales Data Providers For B2B

The next era of B2B data is infrastructure, not enrichment. That sentence, from a vendor in this Wave, is also the report's thesis. The newest edition, The Forrester Wave: Marketing And Sales Data Providers For B2B, Q1 2026, scores eleven providers on twenty seven criteria, and the newest criteria are the tell: AI data readiness, data unification, and a semantic data layer for agentic intelligence.

The report and its newest criteria

The Q1 2026 edition announced its results in March 2026, and the field is the market's infrastructure layer: the firms that supply the account data, contact data, intent signals, and identity resolution every B2B go-to-market stack runs on.

The report's own framing names the disruption: generative AI is "the largest disruption to B2B data providers in decades." The reason sits in the criteria. A data provider that sells enrichment, a spreadsheet of names and emails, is competing with every model that can guess a contact. A data provider that sells infrastructure, identity-resolved, semantically structured, ready for agentic consumption, is selling something models cannot generate. The scorecard now grades the second thing, and the tier table shows who already built it.

The Leader with twenty of twenty seven

ZoomInfo announced its Leader placement on March 16, 2026, with the highest Current Offering score in the field and the highest possible scores in twenty of twenty seven criteria, including every strategy criterion: Vision, Innovation, Partner Ecosystem, and Supporting Services and Offerings.

Forrester's citations carry the verdict. ZoomInfo is "setting a technology standard for data collection and identity resolution," its development of a GTM knowledge graph for data discovery and agentic AI use cases is "noteworthy," and, the sentence that matters most for the market's structure: ZoomInfo "has entrenched itself as the default data provider for B2B sales."

The default. That word is a moat description, and the report also notes the largest disclosed research and development budget in the field, nearly two hundred million dollars a year by the company's own account.

The moat economics deserve a buyer's attention. If the market's default provider is also its biggest disclosed R&D spender, the gap between first and second is not closing on its own. That is not a reason to buy the default. It is a reason to price the switching costs against it, because the default position is what the other ten vendors are competing against, not the other ten vendors.

The anomaly the report named

Data Axle took the second confirmed Leader placement, and Forrester's word for it is the most interesting in the edition: "an anomaly in the market."

The citation explains. Data Axle "shines where complexity and customization are required," with maximum scores in depth of account data, industry and vertical account detail, email and mobile coverage, data quality and validation processes, data integrations, and data unification services. Its recognized strengths are AI data readiness and the semantic data layer required for agentic business intelligence.

Two Leaders, two infrastructure strategies. ZoomInfo wins on the platform and ecosystem, the default choice. Data Axle wins on the deep, customized, unified data layer underneath, the choice for organizations with complicated data estates. The market is big enough for both, and the scorecard says so by putting them both on top.

The strong performer with the privacy scores

Anteriad announced a Strong Performer placement with 5 of 5 scores in four criteria: Privacy Framework Certification and Transparency, Data Sourcing, Buying Group Detail, and Supporting Services and Offerings.

The numbers behind the scores: two thousand five hundred data sources, four hundred fourteen million global contacts at a claimed ninety percent accuracy rate, and buying group prediction capability. Forrester's summary: "superior data sourcing and external privacy compliance are the strongest differentiators."

The privacy score deserves a buyer's full attention. In a market being disrupted by generative AI, the firms that can prove where their data came from are building the asset regulators will eventually require. Privacy framework certification and transparency as a scored criterion is the market's early warning that consent provenance is becoming the new data quality.

What the 2024 edition scored first

The prior edition, Q1 2024, put ZoomInfo on top with the highest possible scores in twenty one of twenty eight criteria, including behavioral and intent data, depth of account and contact data, data matching and enrichment, and innovation.

Set the two editions side by side and the criteria drift tells the story. In 2024 the market scored enrichment, matching, intent. In 2026 it scores AI data readiness, unification, and semantic layers. The word enrichment is quietly leaving the scorecard, replaced by infrastructure, exactly as the market's own language has.

The same drift explains the quiet part of the 2026 field. Vendors whose business was enrichment, selling lists against a contact database, now compete with models that can generate plausible-looking prospect data from public signals. The scorecard's new criteria are the market's answer to that competition: the vendors that survive the generative era are the ones holding verifiable, unified, machine-ready data, because plausibility is now free and truth is not.

Three questions for the data infrastructure buyer

What does your data feed, an enrichment step or an agent? If your stack ends at enrichment, a 2024-era provider may suffice. If agents and models consume your data directly, the 2026 criteria, semantic layers, unification, readiness, are your actual shortlist.

Can the vendor show provenance for every record? Privacy certification and transparency is now a scored criterion. Ask for the sourcing trail on the segments you will buy, and treat missing trails as a compliance liability priced at zero.

Which infrastructure strategy fits your estate, platform default or customized depth? ZoomInfo and Data Axle win on different grounds. If your data estate is fragmented and industry-specific, the anomaly may beat the default, and the scorecard's own tier column will not tell you that.

Forrester does not endorse any vendor named here, and tier placement should not be read as a recommendation to buy.

This pairs closely with Marketing Measurement And Optimization Services, where forrester's first ever evaluation of this category found that the biggest blocker to good marketing measurement is not bad data or missing skills, it is that nobody inside the organization believes the numbers.