Jared Belsky’s battle against principal media is just one of the values driving Acadia’s growth

Jared Belsky had been pushing for media transparency for over a decade, but last year he took the fight to a new level. The co-founder and CEO of Acadia, an agency that has its clients pay media companies directly, took a public stance against principal trading by launching a website and a paid media campaign to rail against it. Belsky believes the practice, in which agencies acquire and resell media, puts them at odds with clients by giving them an incentive to sell what they own, not necessarily what clients need. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here Walking away from principal media means giving up a practice that’s proved lucrative and was even a strategic driver of the Omnicom-Interpublic deal. Transparency also has other costs: Belsky said he recently turned down a $1 million rebate from a media company—no small sacrifice for an agency with revenue of $37 million last year. Even so, Acadia’s revenue rose 27%. Members of Acadia’s largely virtual workforce of 225, with hubs in Atlanta, Serbia and India, are often hired from outside the ad industry. Belsky prioritizes “the right attitudes, core values and cultural matches” rather than prior industry experience, he said. That’s helped keep turnover at a 9% rate, which in turn helps retain clients. Yogi Jashnani, CEO of AirSculpt, has been a client of Acadia since its founding in 2021, including as chief communications officer of Ideal Image and chief revenue officer of Sky Zone. He appreciates Belsky’s commitment to transparency, which goes beyond media transactions, he said. “Typically you’ve got a pitch team, and then you’ve got people on the ground,” Jashnani said. “Sometimes there’s a gap between the two. With Jared, that gap doesn’t exist. So I know the people who are in the pitch are also working on the project.” See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here The values that Belsky and co-founder Sean Belnick embrace were key to Margot Dukes Eddy joining Acadia as head of social by merging her agency, Imagine Media, with Acadia in 2021. Those values include support for work-life balance, how the agency hires and how it brings on new clients. For example, Belsky made the call to walk away from what was then the agency’s largest client in late 2023. “They were being emotionally abusive of our team,” Belsky said. “I’ve learned a lot from Jared,” said Acadia Chief Operating Officer Chad Crowe, who counts him as a mentor. “I can be vulnerable and tell him where I feel I need support.” Belsky has been in digital advertising since he graduated college in 1999 and sent resumes to 37 digital shops, starting with one named iBalls. He then made a detour to get an MBA from Emory; worked as associate brand manager on Fanta for The Coca-Cola Co.; and co-launched a fertilizer startup. He came back to the digital agency world at 360i in 2008, where he rose to CEO before leaving to start Acadia. The broad experience plays into how he approaches Acadia. “Some of the most creative people in the whole planet are in our industry,” Belsky said. “But I would argue that 99.9% of that creativity is trained externally on helping our clients, not internally on how to be more creative, how we hire, how we train, our pricing models, how we build trust.” “Our industry still looks how it looked 10 years ago,” he said. “The fact that I’ve been lucky enough to be an entrepreneur a couple of times allows me to see challenges in a different light. I don’t feel like I’m holding onto 30 years of luggage about how it has to be done.” See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here

Jared Belsky’s battle against principal media is just one of the values driving Acadia’s growth

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