Building Demand Momentum Through Strategic Timing | Rima Mattok | Taboola | Bonus Episode
Rima Mattok is the Director of Demand Generation at Taboola, where she leads the global acquisition and engagement strategy of Realize, a performance advertising platform focused on driving measurable results for brands.
With a background in user engagement, Rima brings a deep understanding of audience behavior and conversion optimization—experience that shapes her approach to helping marketers scale efficiently across channels.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- [00:00] Intro
- [01:09] Getting to know the new product, Realize
- [02:33] Facing rising ad costs across platforms
- [04:22] Launching before peak season to save costs
- [07:10] Questioning the myth that more budget wins
- [09:31] Challenging the idea that AI replaces strategy
- [11:30] Callouts
- [11:40] Unlocking incremental growth on the open web
- [14:16] Testing new channels with wise budgets
- [15:17] Running quarterly moonshot experiments
Resources:
- Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
- Performance beyond search and social taboola.com/
- The performance built for advertisers realize.com/
- Follow Rima Sherman Mattok linkedin.com/in/rima-sherman-mattok-93282739/
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Transcript
Rima Sherman Mattok
They will always tell you you need to capture more demand, increase budget, you're not covering your whole brand searches, etc. But at a certain level, this doesn't make any sense anymore. And you just reach diminishing returns, how we call it.
Chase Clymer
The funny thing about data is you can manipulate data to say whatever you want to express your (goals), to get your end goal across. But yeah, I do not miss those days when we were doing advertising and having to counsel the clients against the platform. Where the platform is like, you have to spend more money, and you're like, that's... No, we need to be better at spending the existing money.
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming to the show Rima Mattok. She is the Director of Demand Generation at Taboola. And she's also driving the growth of their new performance product, Realize. Rima, welcome to the show.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Thank you, Chase. I'm happy to be here.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Well, I guess at the top, let's quickly let folks know if they're unaware of Taboola. What it is, the types of problems that Taboola is solving. And then, quickly, what is the new product, Realize? Before we get into more of your background and what we want to talk about today.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Sure. So traditionally, Taboola was about native advertising. And since we launched our new product, Realize, we're actually more focused on performance advertising. Giving advertisers, especially in the Ecommerce space, another platform they can utilize to scale and grow.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. And I guess, how did you end up at Taboola? What was your career path to become the director of engagement?
Rima Sherman Mattok
So I started working with a few startups as a user engagement, CRM, and everything in the lifecycle. And I was really excited to understand what drives users to take action. And as I joined Taboola, I also took over the role of demand generation. Because I felt that this was the actual missing part to drive new users and create that product fit for the user.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. It's funny how many pieces of the funnel you can really specialize in and just get really nerdy about. But they're all super important and they all need to have their place.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Definitely. Definitely.
Chase Clymer
So now that you are helping with the demand generation over Taboola, obviously, you go on fun shows like this, and you get to talk about all things advertising and Ecommerce. We're recording this at the start of 2026. What do you think are going to be some of the biggest challenges Ecommerce advertisers are going to be facing this year when it comes to scaling profitably?
Rima Sherman Mattok
So I think obviously, the bottom line is a weaker purchasing power. We're an advertiser ourselves. We see this across the board with every platform. CPCs are rising in search. CPMs are rising on social platforms. Essentially, the purchasing power just gets weaker, and with the same budget advertisers these days. And especially in the Econ space, where the competition is extremely high.
I think it's just getting harder and harder to get those, to even reach the right audience. And I'm not even talking about actually driving those conversions.
Chase Clymer
It's unfortunate that when things get more expensive, they never get cheaper. So cost per clicks are up. Just advertising budgets in general. And I think that there was a huge shift back during COVID. And all the CPMs went up, and they just stayed there.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Exactly. And I think that… I actually don't think I know this for a fact because again, we're an advertiser of self. We see CPMs go up year over year. And this especially gets more severe. Let's say, in a high-demand season. And this is what Ecommerce is about. Everyone wants to maximize their holiday sales. But the competition makes it really, really hard.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. Q4 and the big one, Christmas, were a couple of weeks back. And I find myself consulting with dozens of brands throughout the year. And there are a lot of startups that we talk with. And I find that a lot of startups want to start and launch in Q4. And I don't know, I would love to hear your honest take on this. But I feel like that's a really expensive time to start. Maybe just wait another quarter.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Definitely. This is the most expensive quarter of the year. And more than that, you have to build momentum before the peak season. Because again, it becomes crowded, and it's hard to win the conversions. And you do have a certain threshold of CPAs or ROAs that you want to keep.
So you have to build your own, or start building that demand and start to reach the right audience before the peak season.
Chase Clymer
Obviously, every situation is unique. Every startup is unique. We get that. But just some general advice to people who are about to launch, it'd be like maybe launch earlier. It goes to that whole idea of, what was it? 7 touch points that people need before they know and trust your product, and they want to actually buy it. That old advertising thought process is there.
But it's like, yeah, if you're launching in Q4, where it's super expensive against a million other ads, you're probably not going to get the right amount of attention from the right customers that you want to actually make it convert during that time. So, would it be like launching a quarter earlier? At the beginning of the year? Get three months, three quarters of ramp? I don't know, what would your blanket recommendation be?
Rima Sherman Mattok
So I would recommend starting as early as Q1. Essentially, this is already a good quarter. Lower CPCs, a little bit lower CPMs. You've got to build that momentum. Everybody already is excited towards their 2026 plans. So I think that each momentum is a good momentum to capture demand. And entering the competition in high peak seasons won't be a smart idea.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And this is going to come out in a couple of weeks. And so everyone listening to this, if you've got a product that you're about to take... Just launch now. Stand up a landing page. Start that waiting list and just start advertising now. Even if the product isn't going to be available for a quarter or two. You can still drive awareness and start to acquire leads cheaply now. As opposed to paying... Would it be double, triple as you get towards the end of the year?
Rima Sherman Mattok
Yes, definitely. At least double. And in Ecom space, it's even, it can just triple x, etc.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And it's also vertically dependent. And there are all sorts of goofy stuff that happens around with Ecommerce. Don't we love it? Alright. Pivoting a little bit. I love that we dove in there and gave some advice on when to launch. If I'm launching a new brand or business, or I'm a marketer working at one that's trying to grow it. What are some myths that you think are still permeating around in the market around performance marketing to try to help me be a better marketer?
Rima Sherman Mattok
So I would refer to the ones that I'm hearing all the time. The first will be increased budget capture demand. Essentially, if you're going to talk with your rep, let's say search or social. They will never tell you, “Okay, you hit a plateau at this point, spending more is not efficient.” You need to capture [it]. They will always tell you that you need to capture more demand, increase budget, you're not covering your whole brand searches, et cetera.
But at a certain level, this doesn't make any sense anymore. And you just reach diminishing returns, how we call it.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. We don't do advertising anymore at our agency. But I remember every conversation, those reps, their job is to get you to increase spend. And it's kind of disingenuous. And honestly, there's got to be some sort of legal thing around it. It's got to be... It's not really good advice. They're just telling you to spend more money.
Because you are spending more money on the platform, the platform [costs] more money. Of course, they're going to say increase your budget.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Exactly.
Chase Clymer
And the funny thing about data is you can manipulate data to say whatever you want to express your... To get your end goal across. But yeah, I do not miss those days when we were doing advertising. And having to counsel the clients against the platform, where the platform is like, you have to spend more money and you're like, that's… No, we need to be better at spending the existing money.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Exactly. Exactly. No one will probably ever tell you, you know what, this doesn't make any sense.
Chase Clymer
Not from a platform perspective. That's exactly their job.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Yeah. We may do.
Chase Clymer
I was just going to ask, are there any other myths that come to mind?
Rima Sherman Mattok
Yeah, I think essentially also with AI. So each platform now offers the AI algorithm. Maybe Smart Plus, Advantage Plus, AI Max on search, et cetera.
Chase Clymer
Whatever they call it.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Yeah, whatever. And they just tell you, “Okay, trust the AI, go broad, everything will be Okay”. And it works to a certain point. It works on small-scale tests. But if you do want to drive sustainable performance, these black box algos are just unpredictable. Essentially, you can’t rely on those and trust your whole performance and your metrics and drive the ROAs as you're expecting from AI-driven or broad-driven strategies.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, it's funny you say that. I read on LinkedIn earlier this week, and somebody was commenting about a lot of the platforms. This is more on the agency side of things and being a service provider. But it was like a lot of the platforms, to an extent, though, are getting a lot easier. It's less about what they're clicking inside of the platform to get the returns and more about the strategy, the creative.
That is where agencies need to try to differentiate themselves and shine to create value for their clients. In the year 2026 and beyond. Because it is getting harder to compete with the AIs, especially on the testing and stuff like that.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Definitely. But it's also not always true. So I feel actually we have a team of expert campaign managers, and I feel at this point, and I'm happy to say that they're irreplaceable.
Chase Clymer
Oh yeah.
Rima Sherman Mattok
And this is a good thing because essentially, AI, it is nice. There are tests that are better than others. But it's not stable enough at this point.
Chase Clymer
Okay. So these advertisers still, they have their job, they have their place.
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week. So don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
Okay, I do want to pivot, though, because I only have you for so long. So, where does a platform like Realize fit into the market? Where is that going to help advertisers these days?
Rima Sherman Mattok
So yeah, I think that traditionally advertisers were relying on certain social media. They've really built the foundations for performance marketing. And today, that era has changed. So today, to drive actual incremental growth, you've got to just use a smarter medium mix, right? You've got to try new platforms, you've got to expand your efforts. And this is where Realize comes in.
It offers scale just as social does, but in a trusted environment. It also has an AI assistant to basically help you set up everything in just a few clicks and minutes. So the operational overhead will be lower ,and it won't take you a lot of time to scale. And of course, we have a team of experts that basically will take advertisers to recommend them the best performance optimizations they should be getting.
Chase Clymer
So when people are advertising on say Meta, they're advertising within that closed ecosystem of the solutions that they own, like Instagram, actual Facebook, etc. And then on Google, it's a lot of search-powered stuff, and then they get a little bit on display. So when you're talking about expanding your media mix and advertising to Realize. Where are these ads going to be seen and by what type of customer?
Rima Sherman Mattok
So these ads will reach everyone on the open web. And this is the exact point. This is why it does drive incremental growth because these are people on the open web. In the format of premium publishers, premium sites. In various ad formats, whether it's videos or DSPs and articles, etc. Anything to maximize conversions.
Chase Clymer
And so when you say trusted publishers. I know this because we've partnered together on some stuff before. It's like getting ads on articles, etc., on things like USA Today, Yahoo, CBS News, really trusted platforms.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Really, really trusted platforms. And also, these are direct integrations. So it's not a third party data. It's not an attribution that gets lost somewhere. It's actually quality data that tracks your performance.
Chase Clymer
If I work for a brand or work with brands, I'm sure there are a lot of advertising agencies that listen to this podcast. What would be some of those signs or leading indicators that this would be a good idea to experiment with? Is it the amount of money we're spending a month or the size of a brand? But where does it start to make sense for a brand to move into another channel like this?
Rima Sherman Mattok
Honestly, I think, at least for those who are looking to grow, essentially their performance. I'd recommend having at least maybe 10 % or 10 grand to test additional platforms. Regardless, to Realize. This is just healthy for your performance, essentially.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I think that if you're not testing and experimenting with new platforms and new ways to get in front of audiences. You'll never learn if there is some secret. They’re not secrets. It's really just some more performant avenue to acquire the right kinds of customers for your business. I've read it in multiple books. And a lot of experts will say there's a lot of growth that can be had with the traditional avenues, search and social.
When TikTok first came around, people were seeing outsized gains by testing it and then doubling down until the market regulated itself. So it's always a good idea to start testing new things as they come out. Before we go here, though, as an advertiser yourself, do you have a golden rule for building the most efficient revenue-driving media mix?
Rima Sherman Mattok
Yes. I can share with you my secret sauce. So I think that the baseline will be the foundation for any performance marketing is to capture your brand and search demand. So this is basic. These are high-intent users. You've got to invest in that. Next, a significant share of your budget should be going to reach quality users, who are not in the market yet, but you want to capture their demand. So that'll be social. That'll be realizing platforms like them.
In addition, as I mentioned, do you want to keep at least 10 % of your budget for testing and trying out new platforms? Because you never know which niche you can reach that will work, or even not a niche. Something will work. Something will drive incremental growth. And lastly, I would say that I love to have once a quarter that crazy one crazy test, which is the type that's not going to work. And then either you get learnings, or you get wins.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, the moonshot. You always have to try that.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Definitely. So I think the bottom line will be something like a 40-40, 10-10 split of the budget. It depends, of course, on the vertical, on the budget.
Chase Clymer
If I'm listening to this podcast, and I think that Realize might be a good fit for either my brand or the brands that I'm working with, where should I go? What should I do?
Rima Sherman Mattok
Definitely. So, go to just realize.com, as simple as that. And you can sign up and give it a try. We have a team of experts that will pick new advertisers up and walk them through media performance plans to their success.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And that's R-E-A-L-I-Z-E.com. We'll make sure to link to it in the show notes. Rima, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all those amazing insights.
Rima Sherman Mattok
Thank you, Chase.
Transcript
