Summary
In this episode, host Marshall Nyman sits down with Garth Harris, COO of Tune and Cake. Garth shares his unique journey into the affiliate marketing world—starting from an unexpected support role at Cake 15 years ago, to now leading multiple teams across product, marketing, technical support, and onboarding. Tune in as Garth discusses the evolution of his career, the core offerings of both Cake and Tune, and what sets these white label tracking and analytics solutions apart in the performance marketing landscape. Plus, Garth reflects on his favorite experiences, from international travel to the ever-evolving challenges of the industry. Whether you’re a veteran marketer or new to affiliate programs, you won’t want to miss Garth’s insights on innovation, audience segmentation, and the dynamic world of performance marketing.
About Our Guest
Since joining CAKE in 2010 as a Technical Support Analyst, I’ve been privileged to grow alongside the company through various roles and challenges. Early on, I transitioned into an onboarding role and later became the leader of the onboarding team, helping to ensure a seamless experience for new clients.
As CAKE expanded, I took on the role of Client Services Manager, overseeing account management, technical support, and onboarding. In 2013, I had the unique opportunity to move to London to open our UK office, where I built and led a team across sales, marketing, and client services. By 2015, I was heading our Solution Engineering team and later stepped into the Vice President of Client Services role, overseeing client success globally.
In 2020, I established and led our Professional Services division, driving new opportunities for growth and innovation. My career at CAKE reached a new milestone in 2024 when I was appointed General Manager. In this role, I’ve spearheaded transformative operational strategies to enhance profitability and efficiency.
As we enter 2025, CAKE and our sister company TUNE are collaborating to bring greater value to our extensive client base through networking and technology solutions. I’m excited to lead operational efforts across both brands as we explore new avenues for success.
Transcript
Marshall Nyman [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome to the Performance Marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall Nyman, Founder and CEO of Naimon Co. Each episode I will be bringing you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they highlight their experiences within the industry. Today I have Garth Harris, COO at Tune and Cake. Welcome to the podcast, Garth.
Garth Harris [00:00:20]:
Thanks Marshall.
Marshall Nyman [00:00:21]:
Excited to have you on today. Let’s jump right into it. Can you briefly introduce yourself to the audience?
Garth Harris [00:00:25]:
Yeah. Hey guys, my name is Garth Harris. I’m COO of Tune and Cake. As Marshall said, I live in Hunton Beach, California. I’m married, have a couple kids, got an 11 year old daughter, 9 year old son. My daughter was born in London while I was opening up the office out there back in 2013, which is really cool, but otherwise, yeah, glad to be on the show. Marshall.
Marshall Nyman [00:00:46]:
Well, appreciate you joining and would love to know, how did you get your start in affiliate marketing?
Garth Harris [00:00:50]:
Oh man, like every kid that grew up in the 80s, I was just dreaming about being an affiliate marketer. Just kidding. I don’t think anybody necessarily dreams of getting into this industry. I stumbled upon it probably like a lot of us was working at a car dealership and after a few years of those retail hours, I was over it and quit. And one day I was picking up a buddy from work. He worked at a little startup company and his business partner, the founder and head sales guy, I think they had about five people working at the company at that time. He just said, hey, what do you do for a living? And I was like, you know what? Nothing right now. I just quit.
Garth Harris [00:01:25]:
And he was like, well, we’re looking for a support guy. And I was like, for what? Like, what do you guys do? He’s like, well, we have a tracking platform in the affiliate marketing industry. And I was like, what the heck is that? And after a half hour of trying to explain it to me, I still had no clue. But I said yes. I was like, I’ll take that support gig. And that was cake 15 years ago, 2010. So I started off as a technical support analyst, answering people’s calls and tickets about why something was or wasn’t working properly. But yeah, that’s how I got my start.
Marshall Nyman [00:01:56]:
Somehow, ironically, when I started 15 years ago in affiliate marketing, the first platform we worked on was Cake. So pretty funny there. So tell us about your roles over the 15 years and how you evolved into the role you have today.
Garth Harris [00:02:07]:
Oh man, I, I think I just did this exercise where I wrote them all down because it would be ridiculous to put them all on LinkedIn.
Marshall Nyman [00:02:14]:
Yeah.
Garth Harris [00:02:15]:
Technical support, analyst, then transition into onboarding and training. I love teaching people how to use the solution. There was something so satisfying and gratifying about getting new customers up to speed on your software and then becoming successful using the technology. That was probably one of my most gratifying roles I’ve had over the. Over the years, funny enough, but from there, yeah, I’ve done account management. Like I said, I opened up our London office. So I did a bit of sales, marketing, client services. After London was wrapped up, I came back to the States and did sales engineering for a new product that we had called Cake for Advertisers, if anybody out there remembers that product.
Garth Harris [00:02:54]:
And then we subsequently shelved that. I was VP of Client Services for a while, VP of Operations after that, which took on a more broad, broad operational role. We were acquired by Constellation Software back in 2019, and they deemed it necessary for us to have a professional services division. So I stepped in as VP of Product Innovation, where I got to partner with our product teams and also deliver professional and managed services to our customers. And then after about four years of that, I actually stepped into the general manager role of cake. So for those of you, you that know Cake and the various leaders we’ve had over the years, Santi Parini, who is now the CEO of CJ, he was the general manager of CAKE for 10 years and I worked under him for a long time. We had a great relationship. But eventually he moved on to cj, which opened up that general manager seat for me.
Garth Harris [00:03:46]:
And then after a year of that, we hired a president of Tune and Cake. And it was a little redundant to have a general manager role, so I slipped into the COO role, where I now manage our marketing team, our product team, our technical support team, and our onboarding team. So, long, long resume, but it’s been a nice, fruitful career over those 15 years.
Marshall Nyman [00:04:09]:
Well, congrats on the COO role. What’s been your focus since taking over?
Garth Harris [00:04:14]:
Yeah, like I said, all these departments in the past, if you’ve ever worked at a software company, it’s been hard to get them to talk. So a lot of it is just alignment, getting everybody on the same page. But the product piece probably fascinates me and interests me the most. We have two technologies that have competed in the past, so if you’ve ever been in affiliate marketing for a number of years, you’ve heard of Hasoffers, which now has been rebranded to Tune. So, you know, people out there, they’ve probably used both. They probably Use Hasoffers and Tune or Ancake rather. And we can’t keep offering the exact same services to the exact same audience. And so it really is about audience segmentation, making sure we’re building the right tools for the right people.
Garth Harris [00:04:57]:
So now on Tune, we’re very much focused on that advertiser audience and getting our roadmap aligned there. And on Cake, we’ve been really focused on that higher end enterprise affiliate network model that requires a lot more complexity configuration. And so that’s kind of how we’ve segmented the businesses and what my core focus is for 2025.
Marshall Nyman [00:05:18]:
So tell our listeners what Cake and Tune Group is and what is the core focus of the business?
Garth Harris [00:05:23]:
Yeah, so we offer white labeled affiliate marketing, tracking and analytics solutions. So if you are an advertiser and you have an affiliate program, there’s a lot of options out there, right? There’s at the higher end you have the bigger networks like cj, Affiliate window, et cetera. We’re really focused on just providing that white label technology. If you already have your own partners, if you need a platform to do real time tracking and analytics with a seasoned team of professionals that have navigated onboarding and really managing customers through that lifecycle, that’s what Tune is really all about. Cake, on the other hand, similar at the core we provide those tracking and analytics platforms and those tools, but we really are catering towards that network model so managing hundreds if not thousands of affiliates and the same on the advertiser side. So a lot of tools catered around scalability, that scalability not only in the workflows, but also in the tracking and reporting side of the fence. So at our core, yeah, we are white label tracking and analytics platforms, but much more than that obviously what makes.
Marshall Nyman [00:06:33]:
You stand out from your competitors.
Garth Harris [00:06:35]:
On the cake side, we’ve always been a little unique in the sense of we work across a lot of different verticals, including those that require lead distribution tools. And so as opposed to just, you know, click and conversion tracking like a lot of us do, we also allow you to ingest and deliver leads and route them to be able to have a full end to end solution for impression click to lead routing. So those that are in like the financial services space or the edu space anywhere where you’re actually collecting a lead and being able to route it or sell it off to a buyer, or if you’re an advertiser, routing it to a CRM and being able to do that closed loop attribution, that’s where CAKE stands out. A Little bit Tune. On the other hand, we’re trying. We have a marketplace like a lot of the networks do, of course, but we’re trying to be a little different in the sense of our price point and the types of advertisers we’re going after. So it’s not so much retail and E commerce focused. We’re looking after other verticals and building roadmaps for those other ones.
Garth Harris [00:07:33]:
Like cybersecurity. Yes. Some direct to consumer, but that’s really the kind of the focus that we have now on tune.
Marshall Nyman [00:07:40]:
What’s been your favorite part of working at Cake?
Garth Harris [00:07:43]:
Well, I mean, people, of course. I mean, I fell in love with the type of people that tends to attract this industry, which are scrappy. Always willing to figure it out, I think. I mean, beyond the people. I had to be selfish and honest. It’s probably the travel. I mean, I love being able to go all over the world for this company and meet different people from all different cultures. I mean, everything from India to Cyprus to living in the UK for those couple years.
Garth Harris [00:08:12]:
I love traveling and I love being able to meet up with friends in different parts of the world so easily. It’s the travel. But also, this industry is never stopping. It’s never evolving. It’s not boring. We’re constantly having to solve new problems every single day. And so it keeps you on your toes, and I love that.
Marshall Nyman [00:08:28]:
What was it like working in another country?
Garth Harris [00:08:31]:
Well, we arrived, my wife was eight months pregnant, so I didn’t do much work right out of the gates. If you talked to her, she’d probably argue otherwise. I think I took a week of paternity. And so I was like, man, I’m needed here. It’s like we’re only here for a couple of years.