A Host and Post offer in CAKE operates on the premise that a lead must be sold at the time of receipt which means that there is one opportunity for the Affiliate to be paid for a lead. However, a couple of settings located within the Lead Gen tab of the offer card control the logic CAKE uses to evaluate if and when the Affiliate is paid for leads.
Where are these settings located?
Several settings related to lead routing and payment are located on the Lead Gen tab of the Offer card, on the right-hand window labeled Host and Post Parameters.
Payment Settings
The 2 primary settings here control Affiliate payment and they conveniently begin with "Pay Affiliate..." to make them easy to identify.
- Pay Affiliate on Post to CAKE
- Pay Affiliate Only When Available Buyers Found
The logic behind these two settings are a little complex, so we've created a table to help clarify the rules.
| Setting Configuration |
Payment Behavior |
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The default configuration, with both settings enabled, the Affiliate is paid if a lead is sold to a Buyer. A pixel received after the lead is sold may change the price received for the lead (purchase price) but does not affect the payout to the Affiliate. |
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With Pay on Post FALSE, CAKE no longer pays the Affiliate on a lead submission alone. Since the second setting is still true, the Affiliate is paid only if a pixel is received after the lead is sold. |
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This combination is unique because dependencies on a lead submission and sale are removed. With this configuration, the Affiliate is paid only if a pixel is received regardless of whether the lead sells or not. |
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With this configuration, the Affiliate is paid on an accepted lead post to CAKE regardless of whether the lead sells or not. |
Routing Settings
The remaining settings relate to how CAKE's Router sells leads.
- Send Host and Post Failures to Queue: Where leads that fail to sell traditionally are sent to the Scrub Queue, with this setting enabled, CAKE sends those leads to the Queue as it would with Hosted leads. Unlike Hosted leads, the payment rules of a Host-n-Post still apply so that even if a lead sells from the Queue later, no payment adjustment is made and the lead is still unpaid to the Affiliate.
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Ping First: CAKE will post to any configured ping delivery methods first to assess whether routing prioritization changes based on returned Buyer ping responses.
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Sell Exclusive Only: Only buyer contracts with exclusive delivery schedules are evaluated for lead sale.
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Host and Post Timeout: In the event there are a significant number of available Buyers, this sets a maximum duration in milliseconds before aborting the sale attempt for efficiency and to ensure that CAKE can respond to the incoming lead post in a timely fashion.