Pearlfinders · Agency Intelligence
Generated 20 July 2026
New Business & Growth Intelligence
Buying Signal Trends: 12 Months to July 2026
Where brand-side investment is moving, blended across all four Pearlfinders verticals — Marketing, Sport & Entertainment, HR, and Charity & Arts — drawn from 4,959 analyst-verified signals. Where the same real-world event was picked up by more than one vertical within the same week, it’s counted once here, not once per vertical. This view shows aggregate patterns only — individual brand-level signals are reserved for Pearlfinders subscribers. Use the toggles below to narrow the window, and the category explorer to see how different types of buying signal overlap.
Showing:
Signals by category
Every signal is built from one or more of 34 underlying triggers, which we group into four broad categories. A signal can (and often does) touch more than one category — these aren’t mutually exclusive slices, they’re a way of reading the overall shape of activity.
Category explorer
Select between two and four specific triggers to see how often they occur together at the same brand. With two or three selected you’ll see a classic Venn diagram; with four selected, the view switches to an intersection matrix — the clearer way to read overlaps once there are more than three sets in play. Triggers are grouped below by the four categories above, purely to make them easier to find.
Sector & discipline trends
Aggregate share of signal activity by sector, category and discipline. Sector figures are blended across verticals (Marketing, Sport & Entertainment, HR, and Charity & Arts). Category and discipline figures vary meaningfully by vertical, so both charts below share the same vertical filter. No brand-level detail is shown in this public view.
Sector share of signals (% of total in period)
Which sectors are generating the most intelligence activity. Share-based so volume differences between periods don’t distort the picture. Blended across all verticals.
Vertical:
Disciplines flagged as likely requirements (% of mentions in period)
Specifically called out by Pearlfinders analysts as upcoming requirements. A signal can flag more than one.
Category breakdown (% of signals in period)
Share of signals touching each of the four broad categories. Multiple categories can apply to one signal, so this doesn’t sum to 100%. This varies meaningfully by vertical — e.g. HR signals are far more decision-maker-led than Sport & Entertainment, which sees much more supplier turnover and financial signal activity.