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By the end of this year, roughly 4 in 5 small businesses will be using AI somewhere in their marketing. That number on its own tells you nothing useful, because using AI and getting value from it are two different things, and most of the businesses in that statistic are doing the first without the second. Recent coverage puts current small business AI marketing tool adoption at around 54%, with another quarter planning to start within the year. The adoption curve isn't the st

Most small business owners expect to spend more on marketing this year, and more time on it too. Recent research puts it at roughly two-thirds expecting bigger budgets and around three-quarters expecting to spend more hours on it. Marketing has stopped being the thing squeezed in around the real work. For most small businesses now, it is the real work. More spend and more time don't automatically mean better results. They mean more opportunity to either get it right or waste

Two numbers from the same quarter, moving in opposite directions. UK marketing budgets grew by a net 6.9% in Q2 2026, according to the IPA Bellwether. Almost a quarter of firms raised their spend. Over the same three months, the share of those firms expecting better financial prospects at their own business fell from +0.6% to -9.6%. So companies put more money into marketing while feeling worse about their own year. That is not as odd as it first sounds, and it matters more t

75% of UK consumers say the marketing they receive is irrelevant to them. That comes from Optimizely's Marketer's Survival Guide, published at the start of August, which surveyed 1,000 UK consumers alongside 100 UK marketers. Alongside that headline figure: 69% receive duplicate or generic messages, 61% feel overwhelmed by the volume, and 35% unsubscribe after a single poor experience. One caveat worth stating up front. Optimizely sells personalisation software, so read the d

Half of UK adults have ignored a message from a legitimate company because they assumed it was fraudulent. That figure is from MaxContact's Voice of the UK Consumer 2026, which surveyed 1,000 UK adults who had dealt with a company's contact centre in the previous eighteen months. Alongside it: 69% always or often screen calls from numbers they do not recognise, and only 22% strongly agreed they can tell when unexpected contact is genuine. Two caveats. Everyone in that sample