Jared Belsky on Agency Rebates: We Took One, and Gave It Back — Marketing, Media & Adtech

In the Season 10 opener, Acadia's CEO took one media rebate, sent it to 53 clients, and won't say which vendor paid it. Then he explained why agencies should never touch the money.

Jared Belsky ran Fanta at Coca-Cola, ran a fertilizer company, and was CEO of 360i before walking away from Dentsu in 2021 to build Acadia into a 325-person independent agency. In February he wrote the column no other agency CEO in America has written: Acadia had taken a rebate and given it back, pro rata, to 53 clients. On the Season 10 premiere of The ADOTAT Show he explains the mechanics, calls undisclosed rebates and principal media "unacceptable, deplorable, and borderline fraudulent," and lays out how he built a shop where clients pay publishers directly, timesheets don't exist, unwanted attrition runs at 9 percent, and there are zero vice presidents because "titles are cancer."

In this episode

Why Acadia took exactly one rebate, and why he won't name the vendor
"How do you not get pregnant? Abstinence." The case for never touching client money
The $40 billion, where it came from, and what he thinks it actually proves
How the holding companies made rebates acceptable by bragging about them to Wall Street
Why he'd rather work for California Pizza Kitchen than Coke
Zero vice presidents, no timesheets, and the $350,000 group director versus the heart surgeon
Retail media and digital media are merging, and the thing holding it up is labor
What Shackleton would do about rebates (it involves the Arctic Ocean)

Jared Belsky is co-founder and CEO of Acadia, MediaPost's 2024 Independent Agency of the Year, and former CEO of 360i. acadia.io

The ADOTAT Show is hosted by Pesach Lattin, investigative journalist and publisher of ADOTAT, covering ad tech fraud, programmatic economics and holding company structures. Read the issue and the members-only analysis at adotat.com. Confidential tips: tips@adot.at or Signal.

Season 10, Episode 1.

#adtech #agencyrebates #mediaagency #principalmedia #advertising #ADOTAT #JaredBelsky