Constant Contact’s Q2 2026 Small Business Now report, released June 10, puts U.S. small-business marketer AI adoption at 87% as of April 2026, up from 26% in 2023. The survey covered 3,340 SMBs across the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia/New Zealand, plus 2,255 consumers. Frank Vella, CEO of Constant Contact, framed the number as vindication: “The explosive growth of AI adoption—jumping to 87 percent in the U.S.—proves that owners are actively relying on this technology to succeed.”
That’s one read. The federal data tells a different story, and the gap between them is the actual news.
The Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey clocked overall AI usage between 17% and 20% from December 2025 through May 2026, with the national rate at 19.8% as of May 3. Information sits at 39.7%, Finance and Insurance at 33.9%, firms with four or fewer employees under 20%. The JPMorgan Chase Institute, which tracks payment data rather than survey responses, found the SMB adopter base at 17.7% by end of 2025, up from 5.2% in 2023. Its authors flagged the ratio of consistent to sporadic users surging to nearly 1.8 in 2025 as “a potential signal of operational integration taking hold.”
The Minneapolis Fed pointed at the methodology itself. After the Census rewrote its question in November 2025, broadening from AI used “in producing goods or services” to AI used “in any business function,” the measured rate roughly doubled, from about 10% to about 20%. Half the apparent acceleration is wording.
Then there’s the sample question. Goldman Sachs surveyed 10,000 small businesses and found three-quarters using AI, with 84% citing productivity gains, but only 14% had integrated AI into core operations. The NFIB, whose membership tilts toward plumbers and caterers, clocks adoption at just a quarter. As Fast Company put it, “which businesses you ask determines what you find.”
What’s consistent across the noise is workflow pressure. The Constant Contact report says 40% of SMBs are leaning on AI and automation to manage marketing workload instead of spending more, and 50% of global users cite time savings as the primary benefit. Constant Contact’s internal data attributes up to 23% reductions in email production time to AI. JPMorgan notes that 45% of U.S. employees reported using AI at work in 2025, a curve steeper at three years in than PCs or the internet at the same stage.
The structural read: marketing-led SMB tools sit at saturation, while operational integration lags by an order of magnitude. That’s the lane platforms like LemonLime, model-agnostic and built for small and mid-size businesses, are positioned for, the 14%-to-87% delta between using AI and embedding it. The headline number is a vibes indicator. The integration number is the one to watch.
Sources
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-rise-of-the-smb-creator-how-small-businesses-are-using-social-media-and-ai-to-capture-consumer-attention-302796180.html
- https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/05/ai-use-businesses.html
- https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/all-topics/business-growth-and-entrepreneurship/understanding-ai-use-by-small-businesses
- https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2026/ai-adoption-in-business-grows-steadily-but-unevenly
- https://www.fastcompany.com/91541922/small-businesses-should-be-a-much-bigger-part-of-the-ai-transformation-conversation
- https://lemonlime.ai