This article will cover the following:
Overview
When an affiliate wants to promote an offer in CAKE, they submit an application. The approval workflow controls whether that application is granted automatically or requires manual review by your team. Understanding how this works helps you balance speed of activation with traffic quality control.
Offer approval in CAKE operates at the campaign level — it creates a Campaign record linking a specific affiliate to a specific offer. The affiliate does not have access to the tracking link or creatives until this campaign is approved and active.
Offer Approval Types
Each offer in CAKE can be configured with one of three approval types. You set this when creating or editing the offer:
| Approval Type | How It Works | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Requires Approval | The affiliate submits an application and a network manager must manually review and approve or reject it before access is granted. | Offers where traffic quality, compliance, or advertiser relationships require vetting each publisher individually. |
| Auto-Approve | The affiliate clicks Apply and is immediately approved without any manual review step. A campaign record is created instantly. | Open offers where any approved affiliate on your network should be allowed to promote without friction. |
| Invite Only | The offer is not visible in the general marketplace. Only affiliates you specifically invite can see and apply for it. | Private offers for exclusive or premium affiliates, or campaigns with strict advertiser-mandated partner controls. |
You can change an offer's approval type at any time without affecting existing approved campaigns. Changing from Requires Approval to Auto-Approve will not retroactively approve pending applications — those must be reviewed manually.
The Affiliate Application Flow
Step 1 — Browsing the Marketplace
Affiliates log into their portal and navigate to Offers → Marketplace. They can filter by vertical, payout type, geo, and approval type. Invite-only offers are hidden unless the affiliate has been specifically invited.
Step 2 — Submitting an Application
Step 3 — Notification
When a new application is submitted, CAKE can send an email notification to the assigned account manager. Configure this under Admin → Notifications using the 'New Affiliate Application' trigger. See Notifications & Alerts in CAKE for setup details.
Affiliates with Pending campaign status cannot access tracking links or creatives for that offer. They will see the offer in their dashboard but all link-generation options will be disabled until the application is approved.
Reviewing and Approving Applications
Bulk Approval
If you have many pending applications to process at once:
Bulk approval skips the individual profile review step. Use it only when you have already vetted the affiliates through another process — for example, during a mass onboarding of a pre-qualified partner group.
Configuring Auto-Approval
Setting Auto-Approval on an Offer
Network-Wide Auto-Approval
You can also set a default approval type for all new offers under Admin → Global Settings → Offer Defaults. This sets the default that appears when creating a new offer — individual offers can still override it.
Auto-approval grants immediate access to tracking links and creatives. It does not bypass your affiliate-level access controls — an affiliate must still be in Active status on your network to apply. Pending or Suspended affiliates cannot apply for any offer regardless of approval type.
How Approval Status Affects Access
| Campaign Status | Affiliate Can See Offer | Affiliate Can Get Tracking Link | Conversions Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pending | Yes (if not Invite Only) | No | No |
| Active | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rejected | No | No | No |
| Paused | Yes | Yes (link still works) | No — new conversions not recorded |
| Deleted | No | No — link returns error | No |
Note that pausing a campaign stops new conversions from being recorded but does not invalidate the tracking link — clicks will still land on the offer's destination URL, they just will not generate a conversion record. If you need to stop traffic entirely, set the campaign to Deleted or suspend the affiliate's account.
FAQ
No — the approval type is set at the offer level and applies to all affiliates. If you need some affiliates to have immediate access and others to be vetted, the standard approach is to use two separate offers: one with Auto-Approve for trusted partners, and one with Requires Approval for new applicants.
Existing pending applications are not automatically approved. You still need to manually approve or reject them. The Auto-Approve setting only applies to new applications submitted after the change.
By default, a rejected affiliate can reapply for the same offer. If you want to prevent re-applications, you can manually block the affiliate from the offer in their profile or set the offer to Invite Only to remove it from their marketplace view.
CAKE sends an automated approval email to the affiliate when their campaign status changes to Active. You can customize the content of this email under Admin → Email Templates. The email includes a link to their tracking link in the affiliate portal.
Approved campaigns do not expire automatically unless the offer itself reaches its expiration date. If an offer expires, all campaigns for that offer are effectively paused — affiliates can no longer generate conversions. You will need to create a new offer or update the expiration date to resume traffic.
If you have any questions, please reach out to your dedicated CAKE Client Success Manager/Account Manager or contact the CAKE Support Team at support@getCAKE.com.