The Library
The B2B GTM research bank.
Primary sources on demand gen, RevOps, marketing ops, and agentic AI — curated, linked, and refreshed. Updated 2026-07-25.
This library collects the primary research a B2B marketer actually needs in 2026: buyer-behavior studies (Gartner, Forrester, 6sense), GTM benchmarks (ICONIQ, Ebsta×Pavilion, ChartMogul), AI-search data (Ahrefs, Pew, Cloudflare), and the foundational GEO paper. Every entry links the source, flags whether it's gated, and extracts the stat that matters. Vendor-funded studies are labeled as such.
Reports & benchmarks
Direct-link where open · Gated = email or client access required · verified 2026-07-25
| Report | Publisher · Year | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The State of Go-to-Market in 2026 PDF | ICONIQ Analytics · 2026 | High-AI-adopter orgs run visibly leaner GTM teams (125 vs 165 FTEs at $100–250M ARR); sales cycles ~6 weeks shorter. |
| 2025 GTM Benchmarks PDF | Ebsta × Pavilion · 2025 | 655K opportunities, $48B pipeline: win rates fell to 19%; 78% of sellers missed quota; 14% of sellers drive 80% of revenue. |
| GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024) PDF | Princeton / Georgia Tech / AI2 / IIT Delhi · 2024 | Citations, quotes, and statistics boost generative-engine visibility by up to 40% — the foundational AEO paper. |
| The State of AI: Agents, Innovation, Transformation | McKinsey / QuantumBlack · 2025 | 88% of companies use AI; 23% are scaling agents; marketing among functions reporting >10% revenue uplift. |
| State of Marketing, 9th Edition PDF | Salesforce · 2025 | 4,850 marketing leaders: 76% use AI overall — but only 13% use agentic AI. |
| 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report | 6sense · 2025 | First seller contact now at 61% through the journey; the favored vendor wins ~80% of the time. (Vendor-funded — read accordingly.) |
| Against the Odds: SaaS Growth Report | ChartMogul · 2025 | 2,500+ SaaS companies: only 1 in 50 reaches $25M ARR; NRR≥100% companies grow 2× faster. |
| 2026 State of Martech / Landscape | chiefmartec × MartechTribe · 2026 | 15,505 martech products (+0.79% YoY) — flat count, violent churn: 1,488 added, 1,367 removed. |
| AI Overviews Reduce Clicks | Ahrefs · 2025 | CTR for the #1 organic result drops 34.5% when an AI Overview appears (Dec 2025 refresh: −58%). |
| The Crawl Before the Fall of Referrals | Cloudflare Radar · 2025 | AI crawl-to-referral ratios: Anthropic peaked ~500,000 pages crawled per referral sent — why AEO ≠ traffic. |
| Google Users Click Less With AI Summaries | Pew Research Center · 2025 | Users click a result on 8% of searches with an AI Overview vs 15% without. (Google disputes methodology.) |
| State of RevOps 2025 | RevOps community study (334 Director+ leaders) · 2025 | 72% call RevOps a strategic driver; ~40% of orgs still lack a formal RevOps team. |
| The 95:5 Rule | Ehrenberg-Bass / LinkedIn B2B Institute (Dawes) · 2021 | Up to 95% of B2B buyers are out-of-market at any time — a cycle-length derivation, not a survey stat. |
| B2B Revenue Waterfall | Forrester · 2021 | The model that retired the MQL: opportunities + buying groups (95% of purchases involve 3+ people, 2+ departments). |
| Hybrid Attribution Framework | Refine Labs · 2024 | Software attribution systematically undercounts dark-funnel channels; pair it with self-reported attribution. |
| Gartner B2B Buying Survey | Gartner · 2026 | 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience; 45% used AI in a recent purchase (n=646). |
| State of Marketing 2026 Gated | HubSpot · 2026 | 1,500+ marketers; the "loop marketing" frame; 65% of companies exceeded goals. |
| State of Enterprise Revenue (Clari Labs) Gated | Clari · 2025 | 10M opportunities across 121 enterprises: AI-assisted sellers close new logos 20% faster. |
| 2025 CMO Spend Survey Gated | Gartner · 2025 | Marketing budgets flatlined at 7.7% of company revenue; 59% of CMOs say it is insufficient. |
| B2B Marketing Salary Report Gated | Exit Five · 2025 | 1,079 verified in-house B2B marketers — the compensation benchmark for the function. |
| The Rise of RevOps (Wakefield study) Gated | Salesloft · 2025 | Independent-fieldwork data on RevOps adoption and impact. |
Glossary — the 2026 vocabulary
Demand creation vs. demand capture
Creation builds awareness and point of view among the ~95% of buyers not yet in-market (podcasts, social, community); capture harvests existing intent (search, review sites, retargeting). Most B2B budgets over-index on capture.
Dark funnel
Buying activity your analytics cannot see — Slack communities, podcasts, word of mouth, AI chats. The reason software attribution undercounts what actually drives pipeline.
Signal-based selling
Triggering outreach from observable buying signals (job changes, funding, tech installs, site visits) instead of static lists — the operating model behind Clay and Unify.
Bounded autonomy
Letting AI agents act independently only inside explicit guardrails: budget caps, approved workflows, audit trails, human sign-off gates. Promotion to more autonomy is earned per-workflow.
Agentic CDP
A customer data platform where AI agents continuously analyze, decide, and act on customer data rather than executing pre-built segment rules — e.g., Databricks CustomerLake, Hightouch AI Decisioning.
GEO / AEO
Generative/Answer Engine Optimization: structuring content so AI answer engines (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity) retrieve and cite it. Citations, quotes, and statistics boost visibility up to 40% (Princeton, 2024).
Buying group
The full committee (often 6–12+ people) behind a B2B purchase. Modern ops measures buying-group engagement, not individual leads — the core of Forrester’s 2021 Revenue Waterfall.
Intent data
Behavioral signals suggesting an account may be in-market. First-party (your site/product) is strongest; third-party (bidstream, co-ops) is noisier.
Warehouse-native
Tools that operate directly on data in your warehouse or lakehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) instead of copying it into vendor silos.
MMM (media mix modeling)
Statistical modeling of how channel spend drives revenue using aggregate data — no user tracking required. Back in fashion via free open-source libraries: Google Meridian, Meta Robyn, PyMC-Marketing.
Incrementality
The revenue that would NOT have happened without a given activity, measured with holdouts or geo-tests. The causal gold standard attribution models only approximate.
Self-reported attribution
Asking buyers "how did you hear about us?" and treating the answer as first-class data. The standard patch for dark-funnel influence clicks cannot see.
PLG (product-led growth)
A go-to-market motion where the product itself (free tier, self-serve trial) acquires and expands customers.
RevOps
The function unifying marketing, sales, and CS operations — data, process, stack, reporting — under one revenue engine. The fastest-growing US job title of 2023.
B2A (business-to-agent)
Making your brand, pricing, and product data legible to AI agents that research, compare, and buy on a user’s behalf. Structured data and APIs matter more than UI.
How we curate
Primary sources over agency retellings. Vendor-funded research is included but labeled. Predictions are labeled as predictions. Dead links get pruned monthly; new editions replace old ones with the previous edition noted. Spot an error or a missing report? Tell us — corrections are part of the product.