We're your neighbors, and we know marketing.
On The Block Digital is a hyper-local growth partner for Main Street businesses in Oakland and beyond.
On The Block Digital exists for one reason: to help Main Street businesses compete. Not with jargon. Not with dashboards full of numbers that don't mean anything. With real outcomes — more calls, more customers, more growth.
We started because we saw too many great local businesses getting overlooked online. The bakery down the street that makes the best sourdough in town? Invisible on Google. The plumber who's been serving the neighborhood for 20 years? Losing jobs to a company with better ads.
That's not right. Your neighbors are searching for you. We make sure they find you.
Our story
On The Block Digital was born in Oakland, California — a city where every neighborhood has its own personality. Temescal has its corridor of independent shops and restaurants. Fruitvale is the heart of the community, where families have run businesses for generations. Lake Merritt brings people together every weekend. And on every one of these blocks, there are business owners pouring everything they have into their work.
But here's the thing we kept seeing: the businesses that deserved the most attention were getting the least. Chain restaurants with big budgets dominated search results while the family-owned spot with the best tamales in Fruitvale sat on page three. A contractor who'd been doing honest work in West Oakland for decades was losing bids to companies running flashy ads from out of state.
We knew how to fix that. So we started doing it — one block at a time. Not with complicated strategies or marketing speak, but by making sure the right people could find the right businesses in their own neighborhoods. That's still what we do. That's all we do.
What we believe
Outcomes over services
We don't sell packages. We deliver results you can see — more calls, more customers, more growth.
Local knowledge matters
Every city, every neighborhood, every block is different. We pay attention to yours.
Honesty always
If something isn't working, we'll tell you. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you that too.
How we work
1
We learn your block
We get to know your business, your neighborhood, and the people you serve. No cookie-cutter approaches.
2
We make sure you're found
When your neighbors search for what you do, they find you — not a chain three cities away.
3
You grow
More calls. More walk-ins. A fuller schedule. We measure what matters to your business, not vanity metrics.
Who we are
Jack Tyler — Founder
Jack has lived in Oakland with his family near Lake Merritt since 2010. Before starting On The Block Digital, he spent over a decade building data systems and solving technical problems for local businesses and nonprofits — from a healthcare workforce nonprofit in Oakland to a global manufacturing company in the East Bay. He's been a Salesforce architect, a data analyst, and a consultant who ran his own practice right here in Oakland.
What all that work had in common: sitting down with real people, figuring out what they actually needed, and building something better than what they had. On The Block Digital is the same idea applied to the businesses on his block. Jack saw too many good businesses — the ones his family actually goes to — getting buried online while chains with bigger budgets took over the search results. So he started fixing it.
On The Block Digital is operated by Unified Stack LLC, founded by Jack Tyler — a data architect and systems integrator with 10+ years of experience building enterprise data systems, automated workflows, and digital infrastructure. Jack brings the same technical rigor used in enterprise data architecture to helping local businesses compete online.