Lens | Anonymous company identification | Features

Lens reveals which companies are visiting your website by matching IP addresses to company records—helping you identify high-value prospects before they convert.

Overview

Lens is an add-on service that provides anonymous company identification for your website traffic. By analyzing visitor IP addresses, Lens can identify which companies are browsing your site, even if those visitors haven't filled out a form or created an account yet.

This is particularly valuable for B2B companies that want to:

Identify prospects researching your product
Prioritize outreach to companies showing buying signals
Understand which organizations are engaging with your content
Measure marketing effectiveness at the company level before conversion

How Lens works

When enabled, Lens automatically attempts to identify the company associated with each unique IP address that visits your website. When a company is successfully identified, Spectacle creates or updates the company record with the latest information, and a credit is deducted from your monthly allowance.

Lens is designed with privacy in mind:

Gdpr compliant: Lens only identifies companies, not individuals
Known users excluded: Visitors who have been identified with a user ID are automatically excluded from Lens lookups, as you already know their company

Requirements

Lens requires:

An active Spectacle subscription
A separate Lens subscription (see pricing)
Spectacle tracking properly installed on your website

You may need to update your Spectacle installation to ensure compatibility with Lens. The Lens settings page will show installation instructions specific to your tracking method (Js snippet, Segment, REST API, Google Tag Manager, etc.).

Setting up Lens

Visit the pricing page to select a Lens plan. Plans include a monthly credit allocation based on your expected traffic volume.

Step 2: Enable Lens for your workspace

Navigate to your workspace's Lens settings
Enable Lens for the workspace
Choose whether to allow overage usage (see Credit management below)

Step 3: Update your installation (if needed)

If your current Spectacle installation needs updating, the Lens settings page will provide specific instructions based on your tracking method:

Js snippet
Segment integration
REST API
Google Tag Manager
Other integrations

Follow the provided instructions to ensure Lens can properly identify companies visiting your site.

Credit management

How credits are counted

Lens uses a credit-based system:

A credit is consumed only when a company is successfully identified from an IP address
Credits are deducted even if the company already exists in your audience list—this ensures you always have the most up-to-date company information
To maintain data accuracy, Lens may re-lookup companies every 30 days, which will consume an additional credit per company
Credits reset monthly based on your subscription billing cycle

Excluded from credit usage

Lens automatically excludes visitors who have been identified with a user ID. This follows the Segment specification—whenever a visitor has been identified using the .identify() method and currently has a userId in their cookie, Lens will skip the lookup since you already know who they are.

Overage handling

When creating or upgrading your Lens subscription, you can choose whether to enable overage usage:

Overage enabled: When you exhaust your monthly credits, Lens will continue identifying companies and you'll be charged for additional credits at the rate listed on the pricing page
Overage disabled: When credits are exhausted, Lens will stop identifying new companies until your credits reset at the next billing cycle

You can change this setting at any time in your Lens settings.

Subscription management

Upgrading your Lens plan

When you upgrade to a higher Lens plan:

The difference in subscription cost is prorated
Additional credits are added to your account immediately
Your new credit allowance takes effect on the next billing cycle

Downgrading or canceling

When you downgrade or cancel your Lens subscription:

The change takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle
You can continue using Lens until the current cycle ends
Unused credits from the current cycle are forfeited

Credit expiration

Credits remain valid for 12 months from the date they are issued. After this period, unused credits expire.

Plan availability

Lens is an add-on service available to all Spectacle customers. Please check plan availability and pricing for details on credit allocations and overage rates.