Yes, you heard that right. But we’re also cheating a bit… because we’re talking about Ryan Reynolds, the actor and entrepreneur who also serves as Chief Creative Officer of the performance CTV adtech company MNTN. (Maybe next year, Jeff Green!)
Ryan appears on the cover of TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies issue, with a spotlight on Maximum Effort, his wildly successful marketing agency. The agency was acquired by MNTN a few years ago, with MNTN recently revealing it had divested the company just before completing its IPO, returning ownership to the team with Ryan staying on as MNTN’s Chief Creative Officer. MNTN officially went public in May. The stock is currently trading at around $23 per share with a $1.8 billion (damn!) market cap.
Why This Matters:
MNTN ran one of the more memorable ads at Cannes Lions, where Reynolds also made an appearance. The event actually coincided with the four-year anniversary of the MNTN–Maximum Effort partnership, as highlighted in LinkedIn posts by both MNTN and Reynolds.
MNTN is a leading player in a growing adtech trend: performance CTV. It shares that space with companies like Vibe (which MNTN is having a bit of a beef with) and others. More broadly, one of 2025’s biggest adtech stories has been the rise of performance CTV and the push to democratize it—making the channel more accessible to mid-market and SMB advertisers who expect measurable outcomes across all their media investments, including CTV.
Experts React:
MNTN CEO Mark Douglas and the Deadpool actor chatted with NYSE’s Laura Diorio at The Wall Street Journal House in Cannes to discuss their vision of democratizing CTV access. Here’s the video, featuring a key quote from Reynolds about this “sea change” moment in CTV: “the ad space has really been reserved for an elite few for so, so long and I’m really proud of that for the company.”
By the way, this marks one of the rare moments the two – Mark and Ryan – have appeared together for a joint PR effort since the IPO. (We think this is the case but correct us if wrong, please!) It also signals that their relationship remains strong after the Maximum Effort divestiture news, which took some by surprise. Mark also posted today on LinkedIn to congratulate his Chief Creative Officer for his TIME Magazine honor:
Our Take:
Is there a comparison to be made between MNTN and AppLovin? Not necessarily in terms of stock performance—AppLovin is tough to beat there—but more in the way both companies maintain a relatively low profile. They’re quietly chugging along, with some paid marketing and the occasional splashy activation. MNTN, even with Ryan (and outside of Cannes), fits that mold. AppLovin might be the best example. Curious to see if more companies–at least the larger ones–adopt this lower-profile approach.
