Who doesn’t love seeing Ryan Reynolds crack a joke or two during an ad break? From Aviation Gin’s Father’s Day campaign featuring a cocktail called The Vasectomy to the video he appeared in with his "twin brother" announcing ad tech firm MNTN’s acquisition of his agency, Maximum Effort, Reynolds has brought smiles to consumers' (and our own) faces with his antics. Too bad all the money spent on those campaigns likely went to waste.

MNTN, where Reynolds now serves as CCO, recently tested out the effectiveness of the actor’s face in ads—and the results are not good for Ryan Reynolds.

Maximum Effort created two spots for MNTN, one with an appearance from Reynolds and one with only a voiceover. The ads were uploaded to MNTN's platform and targeted at marketers. They were given a $25,000 spend cap and aimed at boosting site visits.

The result: the spot featuring Reynolds only on narration gained 117% more site visits than the one featuring his angelic visage. 

“Wow! That is crushing for an actor to hear,” says Reynolds uncomfortably in the video explaining the experiment’s results. “You literally just broke my soul in a thousand tiny pieces.”

Imani Clark, MNTN’s customer success specialist and the bearer of this horrible news, salts Reynolds’ wounds by showing him the platform’s metrics, which break down each ad’s resultant visit rates (1.61%) and networks where the ad performed the best (CNN). She consoles the star by saying at least he made an ad that worked, even if it didn’t have his face. 

The point of the experiment, of course, is to call attention to MNTN's own ad tech capabilities. 

“The brands who have paid me so much money for my face over the years have totally wasted their cash,” Reynolds concludes.

Maybe he should just stick to movies.