"Company X is researching your category" is not a signal. It is a vendor's guess based on IP address clustering. It might be directionally useful. It is not something a rep can act on today.
A niche signal is different: "Company X posted a VP RevOps role yesterday" or "Company X removed your competitor from their tech stack." These are verifiable, timely, and specific.
The best outbound teams in 2026 build custom monitors for niche signals. They do not buy intent data and hope. They scrape, score, and route evidence that reps can use in the first line of an email.