I can totally relate to Philosoraptor's following comments, with me too being born a smArtha and having convinced myself later that Shankara's position was indeed Vishnu sarvottamatva.

Now, what I find interesting about this discussion is that, contrary to what I was taught as a child, Adi shankara does indeed place a premium on the worship and meditation on nArAyaNa, and does NOT equate His worship with the worship of other gods. This comes out clearly from bhagavad-gItA, but it also comes out clearly from his commentary to the same...
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Yet, because the truth of this was obscured from me by neo-smArtha thinkers, I and many others have been diverted from meditation on brahman to meditation on entities which are not brahman. I have wasted my time following such views, not realizing them to be false. Now I feel the pressure to catch up on doing what I should have done all these years.
Put simply, had I known in my youth that Adi shankara endorsed nArAyaNa-sarvottamatva, as opposed to panchopAsana, it would have made a big difference to me. All along, advaita was represented to me as "all gods are same," with viShNu-bhakti being considered an optional path. You should worship, but it does not matter who you worship. In that case, why do the worship? Any intelligent person will naturally ask. If you say that I am free to think of Vishnu as supreme or non-supreme, then how will that instill the basic shraddha in me to approach Vishnu with sincere feeling? Right knowledge leads to right action. Wrong knowledge does not lead to right action. One does not act on a certain bit of information (i.e. Vishnu is Brahman) unless he is convinced of the correctness of that information. Saying "all gods are same" and "you have freedom to decide which path is right for you" sends mixed signals to a young person who is searching for the truth.
I would like to add that to say that contemporary flag-bearers of Advaita are aloof to the worship of Vishnu is a very mild way of describing what is much more serious and damning. In the last 60 years or so, neo-Advaitins (including the head of a mutt who was fondly called 'walking god' etc) have flooded mass media with anti-Vaishnavite concocted purANic stories, commentaries, and diatribe. The head of a certain mutt in Tamil Nadu has spread several anti-Vaishnavite notions such as 'Vishnu exhibited tamo guna in his avatara as Narasimha and Rama', 'Urdhvapundra was started by Ramanuja since he wanted to rebel against ashes-wearing advaitins', 'Ramanuja's sishya kUrattAzhvAn was defeated in debate with Shaivites' and many more such falsehoods among the ignorant masses. Thiruvisanallur Rama Subba shastri (a vidwAn who lived between 1850 and early 20th century and identified Shankara as Vaishnava) and his excellent works are little known among the masses, but his bitter rival Mannargudi Raju Shastri, a staunch shaivite, is celebrated by the mutt I mentioned earlier with all media attention and fanfare. This is the status of the so-called 'traditional' advaitins. Then what to speak of Vivekananda who said "Vaishnavites, being dualists, are a most intolerant sect in India". Such is the plight of smArthas, be they traditional or non-traditional.