I just made the switch to Spotify from Apple Music.

Not because we carry their audio ad inventory
(we do: Spotify Ads),
but because Spotify quietly did something really smart:

They built audiobooks directly into the listening experience.

No separate Books app. No jumping between icons. Just music and books, side by side, in the same place my mind already goes when it wants to listen and learn.

After spending two years living in a place that didn’t value reading, I’m ready for a reset. I don’t want my brain filled with trending noise. I want it filled with books. I want to replace the scroll with substance.

Why Books Still Matter (More Than Ever)

The main reason I’m going back to books especially for business and life is simple:

A book forces you to stay with one topic long enough to understand it.

Compare that to the current default “learning model” for a lot of people:

• Scroll through 100,000 topics.
• Read 0 full articles.
• Have hot takes on all of them.
• Truly understand none.

Most reactions online aren’t reactions to ideas; they’re reactions to headlines. It’s all surface, no depth. Yet people still post like experts, and that’s how we slowly drift into a society that feels informed but is functionally uneducated.

Books don’t let you fake it. You sit with the author. You sit with the idea. You either do the work turn the pages, think about it, wrestle with it or you don’t. There’s no algorithm to skip the hard parts for you.

Algorithms, Attention Spans, and the Goldfish Problem

Another reason we’re here, culturally, is because the platforms we use every day aren’t designed to reward depth.

Algorithms don’t favor:

• a 30‑minute album you actually listen to
• a film you sit with, phone down
• a book you spend a week digesting

They favor:

• five seconds of your time
• a swipe
• a like
• a “wait, what is this?” moment

Over and over and over again.

That’s why “content” so often looks like:

• people dancing
• cultural appropriation repackaged as trends
• low‑effort audio
• messaging that does nothing helpful for the next generation

It’s not that long-form is dead. It’s that short-form is engineered to interrupt it.

When everything’s optimized for micro‑hits of dopamine, you end up with a population trained for scrolling, not for thinking.

A Whole Music Library, One Click Later

Back to Spotify for a second.

One thing that blew my mind about switching from Apple Music? Everything transferred in one click.

If you grew up in the Napster / LimeWire era, you remember how far we’ve come:

• Download a song over a slow connection
• Hope it’s not corrupted
• Burn CDs
• Label them
• Carry a case full of discs in your car or backpack

Now?

• Click one button
• Watch every playlist, like, and track migrate over

The integrator that handled my migration is called TuneMyMusic, and it was blazing fast. It felt like watching the first episode of Silicon Valley and actually using Pied Piper in real life.

As my mom’s close friends like to say:

They’re right. But the question is: what do we build in that world?

If You’re Going to Live on Your Phone, Make It Count

I’ve always been what you’d call a power user of mobile apps.

For years, people gave me a hard time about how much I did on my phone. But the way I saw it was different: if the phone is the remote control for modern life, why not learn every button?

At some point I found myself more or less alone—without the noise of “Facebook friends” and I had a moment of clarity:

Not an agency that just advertises on phones.
An agency that lives there.

Smartphones exploded because of:

• Social Media
• Apple
• Uber
• Amazon
• Spotify
• And a long tail of apps that quietly rewired our habits

I was always fascinated by e‑commerce, and especially mobile e‑commerce. But in B2B consulting, you still need a conversation. You don’t sell a multi‑channel strategy in a single “Add to Cart” click.

So I asked:

What if the phone could be:

• a visual aid in that conversation,
• a personalized, one‑on‑one store,
• instead of a distraction machine?

That’s what I built at:
👉 Your Own Ad Store

Turning the Phone Into a Tool, Not a Trap

Instead of more doomscrolling, I wanted the phone to do this:

So we built Your Own Ad Store like a mobile e‑commerce experience designed for conversations:

• A DMC (Digital Marketing Consultant) acts as a personal shopper.
• They open the mobile ad store on their phone.
• They walk the owner through:
• SEO
• Google Ads
• Social
• Streaming TV
• Audio
• Outdoor / OOH
• and more
• Everything is categorized and clearly priced at
  👉 yourownadstore.com/store

Same phone, same screen.
But instead of numbing themselves with random content, the consultant is using it to help someone—live, in person, or over video.

To me, that’s a better way to use a smartphone:

• Connect, don’t disconnect.
• Consult, don’t just consume.
• Create value, don’t just feed the algorithm.

Wouldn’t that be better for people than how so many currently spend their time?

If we’re going to be glued to our phones, why not at least use them to make a living, help local businesses, and develop real skills?

Being Early, Being Different

Towards the end of my time as an internet marketing consultant, I had superiors who were shocked:

Today, nobody blinks at that. In 2012, it was mind‑blowing.

I’ve always been an early adopter. Not to be “cool,” but because I could see what technology did for:

• responsiveness
• speed
• accessibility

And I kept asking myself:

Most mobile side gigs today serve consumers:

• Food delivery
• Rideshare
• Micro‑tasks

Very few are designed to help someone become a small business consultant with real tools on their phone.

That’s the gap I wanted to fill.

A Mobile Agency Before the App Stores Catch Up

We haven’t fully transitioned to native iOS or Android apps just yet.

Reasons:

• Budget constraints
• I’ve been working other roles to keep things moving
• App store requirements are strict (for good reason)

But we have:

• A responsive, mobile‑first experience
• That you can bookmark and add to your home screen
• Which already behaves like an app

You can see that UX in action here:
🎥 DMC Mobile Experience

And here’s the important part:

Based on a recent call, we will bring Your Own Ad Store to the App Store and Google Play.

We owe that to the DMC. That’s the interface they’re used to. That’s the experience they expect when they do their job.

Apple and Google have both been clear with me about what we need to:

• meet UX guidelines,
• protect users,
• and fit cleanly into their ecosystems.

So yes, we’ll get there. I wish that day were today. Realistically, it’s weeks or months away. But directionally, we’re on the path.

Why Small Business > Just Serving Consumers

I’ve worked on both sides:

• Helping consumers get what they want
• Helping small businesses survive and grow

I can say this with confidence:

When you help a local business:

• you’re impacting families
• you’re impacting neighborhoods
• you’re helping someone keep employees on payroll
• you’re changing the trajectory of real people, not just dashboards

I also know firsthand that:

• The sales rep role
• The in‑house marketer role

are gradually being made “expendable” by technology.

But here’s the nuance:

If you take those same skills and pair them with tools like:

• SolaraCloud for AI workflow automation
  👉 solaracloud.ai

you don’t lose your job—you become more efficient and more valuable.

AI doesn’t have to be the thing that replaces you.
It can be the force multiplier that lets you:

• manage more clients
• move faster
• make better decisions
• and keep more of the upside

Making Digital Marketing Less Fragmented (and Less Tab‑Cluttered)

Another place we’ve tried to make digital marketing actually usable is our Lead Cloud:

👉 Lead Cloud

Instead of:

• 27 tabs
• 15 logins
• 9 disconnected reports

Lead Cloud pulls together:

• chats
• calls
• activity
• web traffic

in one place.

And with AI in the loop, it doesn’t just show you data it helps interpret it and act on it.

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon hunting through random tools and half‑exported spreadsheets, you know how big that is.

My Love Hate Relationship with Social Media

Here’s where it gets tricky:

We’re not a publisher. We don’t control:

• where people go
• how they spend their time
• which app they open first when they wake up

Social platforms have incredible backend capabilities:

• hyper‑specific targeting
• powerful lookalike audiences
• extremely efficient CPMs and CPCs
• amazing ROAS if:
• your audience is defined well
• your creative works
• your offer is real
• your consultant actually does their job

The issue isn’t the tools. It’s how they’re used.

A lot of marketers lean into:

• DMs over real conversations
• volume over relationship
• short‑term hype over long‑term trust

That’s how we end up with:

Meanwhile, tried‑and‑true channels like:

• PPC (Google Ads, etc.)
• SEO
• Outdoor / OOH
• Streaming TV
• Audio (yes, including Spotify)

often get ignored or underused.

The brands I’ve seen win long‑term tend to be the ones that:

• Don’t rely solely on social ads
• Invest in broader awareness channels
• And still respect search and SEO as the lower‑funnel engines they are

Personally, social media has also been a personal struggle for me:

• Fewer boundaries than ever
• More noise than ever
• More opportunities for things to get personal, fast

But I haven’t given up on the towns and people who gave me a chance early in my career. I still want to help them modernize, advertise, and survive.

Teaching People to Use the World They Scroll

I also want to give new people a chance in this field:

• People who scroll all day but don’t know how the ads got there
• People who don’t realize the backend of these platforms is a full‑blown economy
• People who could absolutely succeed if someone just:
• pulled back the curtain
• showed them the tools
• and walked them through a real strategy

A lot of them don’t know:

I’d like to teach that again.

That’s why I founded Your Own Ad Store:

👉 YourOwnAdStore.com

Want to Go Deeper into the DMC Model?

If this “ad agency on a phone” idea interests you, here’s the full breakdown:

👉 The DMC Model: What Is Your Own Ad Store?
https://www.yourownadstore.com/blog/whatisyourownadstore

It explains:

• How the DMC works
• How the mobile app‑like experience runs
• How SolaraCloud gives every DMC enterprise‑grade AI in their pocket

White Label: For Providers Who Keep Getting Asked “Do You Do Marketing?”

If you’re:

• A solutions provider
• An IT/MSP, SaaS, telco, media company, or professional services firm
• A web/dev/print shop

and your customers keep asking:

…but you don’t have:

• vendors
• products
• time
• or hiring budget

then the White Label Ad Store might be a fit.

You can offer a full marketing lineup under your brand, while we fulfill in the background.

Details here:

👉 What is a White Label Ad Store?
https://www.yourownadstore.com/blog/whatisawhitelabeladstore

Want Proof It’s Real?

If you’re cautious (you should be), and want 100% real reviews, no fluff:

• Customer Reviews:
  👉 https://www.therealalanzuckerman.com/customerreviews
• LinkedIn Recommendations:
  👉 https://www.therealalanzuckerman.com/linkedinrecommendations

These aren’t invented testimonials. These are real words from real clients and colleagues.

If You Want the Full Context of Where I’m Coming From

For full transparency, I’ve been real and honest on my own site in ways most people usually reserve for private conversations.

If you want to know what I’ve been up to recently, personally and professionally:

👉 Building Something Difficult on Purpose
https://www.yourownadstore.com/blog/learningexperience

It’s about:

• working in QSR while building a tech company
• what I’ve learned from Google, Apple, and support teams
• why I still believe in this model even when it’s hard

Bringing It Back to the Beginning

So what does all of this books, Spotify, algorithms, mobile apps, AI, DMCs have in common?

It’s this:

• You can let technology shorten your attention span
  or you can use it to sharpen your mind.
• You can let algorithms consume your time
  or you can build systems that serve real businesses.
• You can let your phone be a slot machine
  or you can turn it into a toolbox.

I switched to Spotify for audiobooks because I want to spend more time learning from people who took the time to write books, not just tweets.

I built Your Own Ad Store because I believe:

• the future of digital marketing is mobile, guided, human, and personalized, and
• phones should help people build something real, not just scroll their lives away.

If you’re someone who:

• wants to help small businesses
• wants to use AI as leverage, not as a threat
• wants to turn your phone into a business instead of just a distraction

then this is the world I’m building real world tools for.