Table of Contents
Why refunds hide silently inside profitable campaigns
The illusion of profitability
Many campaigns appear profitable on the surface.
Revenue is up. Conversion rates look healthy. Ad platforms show positive ROAS.
Yet money quietly leaks in the background.
Refunds are the reason.
CBSplit was built to expose this hidden layer.
Refunds arrive late by design
Refunds rarely happen at the moment of purchase.
They usually arrive:
- Days after checkout
- After product delivery
- After first subscription rebill
- After customer support interaction
By the time refunds appear, campaigns are often already scaled.
CBSplit treats delayed outcomes as first-class data, not accounting noise.
Dashboards show revenue first, refunds later
Most analytics systems are front-loaded.
They emphasize:
- Gross revenue
- Conversion counts
- Initial approvals
Refunds are:
- Logged separately
- Reported days or weeks later
- Aggregated at account level
This delay allows refund losses to hide inside “profitable” campaigns.
Refunds are not evenly distributed
Refunds are rarely random.
They cluster around:
- Specific traffic sources
- Certain offers
- Particular upsell paths
- Aggressive retry flows
A campaign can be profitable overall while one segment quietly destroys margin.
CBSplit surfaces refund patterns at the offer and path level.
High conversion funnels often produce high refunds
Funnels optimized aggressively for conversion often create:
- Impulse purchases
- Misaligned expectations
- Forced retries
- Confusing upsells
These funnels convert well but refund badly.
CBSplit distinguishes between easy conversions and durable revenue.
Refunds distort lifetime value
Refund-heavy funnels inflate short-term metrics.
They hide:
- True LTV
- Support costs
- Payment processor risk
- Future account stability
A campaign that looks profitable today can collapse under refunds tomorrow.
CBSplit tracks revenue after refunds, not before them.
Refunds trigger downstream damage
Refunds do not only remove revenue.
They increase:
- Chargeback risk
- Processor scrutiny
- Account flags
- Traffic quality penalties
Traditional tools rarely connect refunds to these downstream effects.
CBSplit does.
Why refunds are invisible to most tools
Most tools fail to capture refunds because:
- Refunds are server-side events
- Timing is delayed
- Attribution is complex
- Platforms optimize for speed, not truth
CBSplit was designed to wait for financial truth, even when it is inconvenient.