Jimmy KimCEO & Founder, Commerce Roundtable · Marketer of 17+ Years, 4x Founder. Former DTC/Retailer & SaaS Founder. Newsletter. Host of ASOM & Send it! Podcast. DTC Event: Commerce Roundtable

AI Adoption: What Real Marketers Told Us City by City

16 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, Jimmy Kim recounts observations from retention shows across several U.S. cities, noting the proportion of marketers who reported using AI. He cites roughly 30% in New York, 30‑40% in Miami, 50‑55% in Los Angeles, and about 80% in Austin. Kim contrasts these figures with his own company's AI‑native stance, emphasizing that while his team works with AI daily, many marketers either lack AI integration or are hesitant to acknowledge it. He suggests possible embarrassment or cultural gaps as reasons for the disparity.

Chapters

We definitely spent a good portion of each retention show talking about AI. All the speakers talked about recent AI discoveries and different things that they're doing. And when I would ask the room, you know, how many are doing AI, it was kind of shocking. And maybe they weren't raising their hands, but it was really shocking as I went through city to city. New York, for example, and I'm not picking on any of these cities, but like we went to New York and it was probably like 30% of the room. And then we went to Miami and it was probably like 30, 40% of the room. We went to LA and it was probably like 50, 55% of the room. And actually surprisingly, Austin was the only place that we probably had about about 80% of the room that was actually using some form of AI. So it was mixed. But what we're quickly learning was that AI definitely was not at the forefront the way that you and I think about and the way that we operate within our teams and the things that we do. I mean, we're very AI native as a company and also as people. We're just every day inside of it. But these guys in general, being marketers and retention people, were not heavily in it, or maybe they're embarrassed to talk about it. I don't know.