CTV advertising company MNTN filed a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday disclosing its intention to sell common shares to the public. It also announced it was selling Maximum Effort, the marketing agency that was founded by actor Ryan Reynolds and that MNTN purchased in 2021. 

According to the SEC document, known as an S4 registration statement, MNTN sold back Maximum Effort “to an affiliate of its original owner,” and that the deal is expected to close on April 1.  

In connection with that deal, MNTN said it would enter into “a services agreement pursuant to which Maximum Effort will continue to provide creative services to the company.”  

Advertising industry analyst Brian Wieser, publisher of Madison & Wall, noted that actor Reynolds was not mentioned in MNTN’s sale disclosure. That, coupled with the buyer being an affiliate of the original owner, leads Wieser to conclude that the actor’s “involvement in the company will be relatively limited going forward.” 

Wieser also noted that there are few managed services companies in the industry that publish detailed financial information, and managed services "represent an important and likely growing part of the overall industry.”  

MNTN disclosed that its revenues last year totaled $226 million, up 28% from the prior year. It narrowed its net loss last year to $32.9 million from $53.3 million in 2023. The firm did not disclose total billings in the filing but Wieser estimated the 2024 total at $700 million. Marketing expenses for the year were about $76 million. The company reported reaching 130 million unique households via TV adds delivered through its platform. 

MNTN, Wieser noted, “is primarily focused on bringing small and medium-sized segment of businesses (aka SMBs) to connected TV, claiming that 92% of its customers never advertised on TV before. SMBs are very much en vogue among decision-makers in the advertising industry, as there is a widespread appreciation that SMBs are responsible for most of the revenue growth that Google and Meta have experienced over the past two decades.”  

Within the television industry, he added, “there have recently been significant announcements from many of the biggest traditional network owners,” (Comcast, Disney and Parmount among them), “regarding their efforts to capture spending from” SMBs via their CTV properties.  

The filing indicated that the number of shares to be offered and the price range have yet to be determined. But the intention is to list Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “MNTN.”