Refund policies at crypto ad networks compared: what happens to an unspent balance

The question that comes up most, once a first campaign disappoints, is not about CPMs. It is: I deposited, it did not work, can I have the rest back? We read the refund clause, the inactivity clause and the termination clause at all fourteen crypto ad networks we have reviewed, and the honest answer is that at most of them the deposit is the last moment the money is yours. Three networks write a refund path into the contract and price it. One promises a full refund and, when we reviewed it, had no working platform to deposit into. And at nearly every network a quiet clock starts on the day you stop logging in, after which the balance is written off, drained by a monthly fee, or deleted with the account.

How we checked

Everything below comes from the advertiser terms, refund policies and FAQs each network currently publishes, read by us on 24 September 2026. For every contract we looked for five things: whether an unspent balance can come back at all, what conditions and deadlines attach, which fees are deducted, how the money travels back (the same rail, a fiat value, or account credit), and how long an idle account keeps its balance. Where a document is silent we say so rather than guess, and where two documents at the same network disagree we quote both. Ratings link to our full reviews. This is the advertiser’s side of the money; the publisher side — payout floors, clearing periods, currencies — is in our payouts and minimums table, and the identity step some networks put in front of a refund is in our KYC comparison.

Refunds at a glance

Network	Unspent balance	Conditions, deadlines, fees	Idle balance
Coinzilla (9/10)	Non-refundable, in capitals	Exception only if Coinzilla terminates through no fault of yours; a refund is released after the account and a company representative pass KYC, by bank transfer only	Account and balance deleted after one idle year, with three warning emails
Bitmedia (6.5/10)	Non-refundable, in capitals	Exception only if Bitmedia terminates through no fault of yours; fraud clicks re-credited to the account; “no refund for low conversion rates”	Written off after six months; restore within three more and 60% returns as ad credit, never cash
Cointraffic (7.5/10)	Refundable, minus 15%	Request within 30 days of ending the agreement; balance of at least €50; the first deposit is “spent in full”; identity documents may be required; same payment account as your last payment	€50 a month from the 150th idle day, times 1.5 every three months, then deletion
A-ADS (7/10)	“Entire discretion of AADS”	Nothing once funds have gone to publishers; a banned ad may get the remainder back “after deduction of any costs”	Deleted after six months; you “waive any rights to claim these funds”
HypeLab (7/10)	Non-refundable, in capitals	No exception written anywhere in the document	Forfeited after twelve months
Blockchain-Ads (4.5/10)	Discretionary after 35% is consumed	Policy version 1.3 (late September 2026): a request “does not create a right to redemption or refund”; decision within 10 business days; deductions for delivered media, earned fees and non-cancellable commitments; crypto converted at the rate on refund day. The earlier $2,500 fee, 14-day window and 20%/10% deductions are gone	No inactivity clause in version 1.3
AdsNetwork (4/10)	Blockchain-Ads’ previous policy, with smaller numbers	35% spend gate; $1,500 processing fee plus 15% managed and 5% creative fees; 14-day window; the terms add “non-refundable unless fraudulent traffic is proven”	Refund eligibility lost after six months
Mintfunnel (5.5/10)	Per order, no balance	Cancel within 24 hours of purchase if work has not started, “full or partial refund at our discretion”; nothing once distributed; a chargeback forfeits every refund right	Not stated
DOT Ads (5/10)	“No refunds … for partially used or unused credit”	Billed in advance; cancel before the next charge date at no fee; compliance terminations refund nothing	Credit written off after six months
Slise (5.5/10)	“Final and non-refundable”	Refunds only if Slise itself ends the service; $5,000 prepaid minimum; liability capped at $5	Residual funds forfeited after six months unless an extension is granted
CoinAdMedia (4.5/10)	Advertiser terms silent	Platform terms: non-refundable once impressions start, “except at CoinAdMedia’s sole discretion”; balances at termination refunded “at CoinAdMedia’s discretion”	Not stated
Coin.Network (5/10)	“Deposited Funds may not be cashed out”	BuySellAds terms: refunds as account credit only, in 24-hour windows; orders non-cancellable; pro-rated refunds only for under-served orders	$100 a month after six idle months, until the balance is zero
TrafficSigma (3.5/10)	Refundable in full, on paper	Ask within 30 days of the deposit; paid within 14 days to the original method; identity check possible; no platform found behind the form	Not stated in the policy
Adshares (3/10)	No contract to invoke	The only terms are a generic website template with no refund clause; settlement in ADS coin	Chain-level fee on wallets idle for two years

Three networks, one sentence

Coinzilla, Bitmedia and HypeLab govern refunds with the same sentence, in the same capital letters: all amounts paid by advertisers and reflected in users’ accounts are non-refundable. At Coinzilla and Bitmedia the sentence is followed by the same instruction: you may pause or stop a campaign at any time, but you are “solely responsible” for doing so, and an unpaused campaign “will remain active until all the funds transferred in advance … are spent.” The differences are in what comes after.

Coinzilla’s version has an exit, though not one you control. If the company terminates the agreement for reasons not attributable to you, it owes you “all the amounts paid in advance and not used”, returned by the same rail you paid on: bank transfer for bank transfer, and crypto for crypto at the payment processor’s exchange rate. Before any of that moves, the compliance clause applies: the balance goes back only after the account is verified and a representative of the advertiser — a shareholder or senior manager — has passed KYC and proved their position, and “the refund will be made only by bank transfer.” The terms also warn that the figure in your dashboard has “a notional value, calculated and administered at our discretion” and does not represent “an effective amount the Advertisers and/or Publishers are entitled to spend or to withdraw.” The inactivity clock is the longest in the field: an account idle for one year is permanently deleted along with its unused amounts, after emails at seven days, 48 hours and 24 hours before the deadline. It is the only network that promises to warn you three times.

Bitmedia’s advertiser agreement carries the same termination exception, then takes back most of the room with clause 6.4: funded accounts inactive for six months “will lose access to their funds” and, if still inactive, are deactivated with the funds “written off with no refunds.” Clause 7.5 sets out the consolation. Deactivation comes with 14 days’ notice and a three-month grace period; restore the account inside it and 60% of the outstanding deposit is re-credited “exclusively for the placement of advertisements”, accounted in dollars at the rate on the day you originally funded, with the clause’s own summary: “No cash refunds.” The FAQ adds two answers the contract does not: fraud clicks are written off from the publisher and returned to your account, and there is “no refund for low conversion rates.” Deposits under $300 are simply not credited, and the FAQ says those smaller amounts are non-refundable too.

HypeLab’s terms reproduce Coinzilla’s sentence word for word at clause 7.2 — the two documents share most of their boilerplate — and then stop. There is no termination exception; the only termination clause in the document is the one that lets you leave on 14 days’ notice. Clause 7.3 adds the forfeiture: accounts inactive for twelve consecutive months are deactivated and “unused funds will be forfeited.” HypeLab has the shortest refund section in this comparison because, in effect, it does not have one.

Where a refund exists, and what it costs

Cointraffic is the one established network whose advertiser terms describe a refund of an unspent balance as a right rather than a favour. Clause 6.3 lists three cases: an incorrect payment, a publisher’s fraud that you prove with a detailed report of the offending sources, and the one that matters here — having spent less than you prepaid when the agreement ends. The conditions are specific. You must ask within 30 days of termination, the unused balance must be at least €50, the money goes back to “the same payment method and same payment account that you used to make your last payment”, within 30 working days, and you may be asked for identity documents first. The deduction is “an administrative fee of 15% (fifteen per cent)”, plus any transaction fees. The exception is the first deposit: the Minimum Deposit — the figure shown in the account under “Add funds” — is “considered non-refundable and subject to being spent in full on the Platform.” So the first tranche never comes back, later tranches come back at 85%, and if the agreement ends because you breached it the contract lets Cointraffic keep the whole balance as a penalty. The terms carry an effective date of 7 June 2019.

Blockchain-Ads has two documents, and they do not sound alike. The advertising agreement says refunds are permitted “for undelivered campaign budget, prorated based on actual delivery”, paid “within 30 days after written request, subject to verification.” The refund policy it incorporates did the pricing until late September 2026: 35% of the budget spent before you could ask, requests within 14 days of the campaign’s end, a “$2,500 Refund Processing Fee” that was “non-refundable under any circumstances”, 20% more for managed service and 10% for banner design, crypto returned at the dollar value on deposit day, and eligibility lost after six idle months. Version 1.3, which the page dates as in effect from 21 September 2026 and which replaced that text on the site at the end of the month, keeps the 35% gate and removes every number after it. Advertising credit is “purchased for use, not withdrawal”; a request “does not create a right to redemption or refund” and is approved or rejected at the company’s discretion; performance “is never a refund ground”; an approved amount comes back after deducting delivered media, earned fees, non-cancellable supply commitments, chargebacks and third-party return costs; crypto is converted at the rate on the day of the refund, not the deposit; and the written decision is promised within 10 business days. The inactivity clause left with the fee. On the network’s own $10,000 minimum, the arithmetic has changed shape rather than improved: spend the qualifying $3,500, and what comes back from the remaining $6,500 is whatever the company decides, rather than $4,000 by formula.

AdsNetwork’s refund policy is the same document with smaller numbers, a resemblance we set out clause by clause in our review: the 35% gate, the 48-hour reporting window for platform errors, the five business days for misrepresentation claims, the 14 days after campaign end, the 7–14 business days, the dollar-value rule for crypto, the six-month eligibility cut-off. Its fees are 15% for managed service, 5% for creative work and a $1,500 processing fee, again “non-refundable under all circumstances.” Its terms and conditions, a separate page, say payments are “non-refundable unless fraudulent traffic is proven”, and send disputes to arbitration in Dubai.

TrafficSigma publishes the friendliest refund policy in the niche, dated 20 July 2026: if you decide the platform is not for you, the funds not yet spent on delivered advertising come back, provided you ask within 30 days of the deposit, processed within 14 days to the original payment method, with an identity check possible first. The exclusions are the usual ones — spent budget, accounts closed for fraud, promotional credit, disputed charges — and a chargeback filed before contacting them may get the account suspended. We rated the network 3.5/10 because, in our review, nothing we could find sat behind the signup form to deposit into. A refund guarantee is only as good as the deposit form in front of it.

Coin.Network runs on BuySellAds’ contract, and that contract closes the door in its clause on funding your account: “Deposited Funds may not be cashed out.” All orders are non-cancellable, overriding the IAB standard terms that would otherwise give a cancellation window. The refund policy the terms incorporate defines refunds as “crediting your Account balance” — credit, not money — and limits them to two cases: a first purchase reported within 24 hours (you bought the same zone twice, or the publisher moved the ad), and a first recurring charge reported within 24 hours of renewal. The only pro-rated money-back path it names is for crypto orders “not fully served”, up to seven business days after the campaign ends, and in periods of high volatility BuySellAds sells crypto payments for dollars and “we are only able to refund the USD value.” The closing sentence governs all of it: “Nothing herein grants an obligation by BSA to grant a refund.”

Discretion and silence

A-ADS puts it in four sentences: “Any refunds are at the entire discretion of AADS. No refunds are possible once funds have been paid to Publishers. Idle accounts, including the remaining balances, shall be automatically deleted after 6 months of inactivity. By using AADS you agree to waive any rights to claim these funds.” The moderation section allows one partial exception — an advert banned mid-flight “may” have the remaining funds returned “after deduction of any costs incurred by AADS” — and that is the whole policy. It fits the network’s shape: campaigns from $100, paid in Bitcoin, spent in days. Treat the deposit as spent when you make it, and size it accordingly.

Slise requires a $5,000 prepaid minimum, described in clause 4.2 as “non-refundable unless agreed otherwise” and in clause 9 as “final and non-refundable”, with refunds possible “only if the Platform initiates termination of services.” Accounts idle for six months may be deactivated with “residual funds forfeited unless an extension is granted.” The same document caps the company’s maximum liability at five dollars, which is the number to hold in mind when you read the word “agreed.” DOT sells subscriptions billed in advance and says so plainly: “No refunds will be granted for partially used or unused credit.” You can cancel before the next charge date without a fee, accounts with six or more months of inactivity have their credit written off, and terminations for compliance reasons — a category the terms define broadly — do not “entitle the Client to refunds.”

CoinAdMedia’s advertiser terms, dated 15 January 2026, never use the word “refund”, a gap we flagged in our review. The platform’s general terms of service, dated the same day, fill it with two maybes: deposits “are non-refundable once campaigns have begun delivering impressions, except at CoinAdMedia’s sole discretion”, and balances remaining at termination “may be refunded at CoinAdMedia’s discretion, less any amounts owed.” Read literally, a balance that has not yet served an impression is not covered by either sentence, and nothing says it comes back. Mintfunnel has no balance to argue over — you pay per campaign or per press release — so its policy is about orders: cancel within 24 hours of purchase and, if work has not started, “a full or partial refund may be issued at our discretion”; once a release is distributed there is no refund; a chargeback filed before contacting support means permanent suspension and “the forfeiture of any further rights to refunds or credits.” Its crypto clause is the one every network should copy: refunds go only to the wallet address that paid, so a payment sent from an exchange “may not be refundable” because of the exchange’s own policies. Adshares, finally, has nobody to ask. The only terms behind a working ad server are a generic website template governed by the law of São Tomé and Príncipe that never mentions deposits or refunds; whatever you fund is ADS coin in an ad-server account, and the chain itself levies an inactivity fee on wallets idle for two years.

The inactivity clock

None of this is on a pricing page, and all of it decides whether the credit you parked in January still exists in July. Ordered by how fast the clock runs: Cointraffic flags an account inactive after 150 consecutive days with the balance unused, then deducts €50 on the first of the following month and multiplies the fee by 1.5 after every further three months, until the balance drops below the next fee and a 30-day deactivation warning goes out; fees already taken “will not be returned even if your Account status becomes active again.” At six months, Bitmedia suspends access and starts its three-month grace period, DOT writes the credit off, Slise forfeits residual funds unless you have asked for an extension, A-ADS deletes the account and the balance with it, BuySellAds begins charging Coin.Network advertisers $100 a month “until your balance reaches $0”, and Blockchain-Ads and AdsNetwork strike you off the list of people allowed to request a refund. At twelve months, HypeLab forfeits unused funds and Coinzilla deletes the account after its three warning emails. Adshares’ chain fee waits two years. Mintfunnel, CoinAdMedia and TrafficSigma publish no clock. The practical rule is a calendar entry, made on the day of every deposit, for the date the money stops being yours.

How to deposit so the clause never matters

1. Deposit at the minimum and top up in tranches. Every contract above treats the balance as spent the moment it lands; the only money you can lose is money that has not been spent. At Cointraffic the first deposit is non-refundable by name and every later one is 85% refundable, which is an argument for making the first one exactly the minimum.
2. Pause, do not wait. Coinzilla and Bitmedia make you “solely responsible” for stopping a campaign, and an unstopped campaign runs until the balance is gone. A disappointing first day is the moment to pause, not the moment to draft the refund email.
3. Pay from a wallet or account you can receive on. Coinzilla, Bitmedia, Cointraffic and TrafficSigma refund by the same rail you paid on; Mintfunnel refunds only to the paying address. A deposit from an exchange wallet or a card you have since cancelled turns an approved refund into a support ticket.
4. Know the dollar-value rule. Blockchain-Ads, AdsNetwork and Bitmedia value a crypto balance at the rate on the day you deposited; BuySellAds may hold only the dollar value in volatile weeks. If the coin doubles while your money sits there, the network keeps the difference.
5. Never file a chargeback first. Mintfunnel makes it a permanent suspension and a forfeiture of refund rights; TrafficSigma may suspend the account; at Blockchain-Ads and AdsNetwork a dispute moves the file to a compliance team that support cannot reach. Write to the network, keep the thread, and escalate only with the paper trail in hand.
6. Get the exception in writing before the deposit. Slise’s “unless agreed otherwise”, CoinAdMedia’s “sole discretion” and A-ADS’s “entire discretion” are all invitations to negotiate. A one-line email confirming that an unspent balance will be returned, and on what terms, is worth more than the clause it overrides.

Crypto ad network refund FAQ

Can you get a refund from a crypto ad network?

Usually not for money you simply did not spend. Of the fourteen networks we review, Coinzilla, Bitmedia, HypeLab, Slise and DOT declare deposits non-refundable in their terms, A-ADS and CoinAdMedia leave refunds to their own discretion, and Coin.Network’s BuySellAds contract says deposited funds “may not be cashed out.” Refunds for fraudulent traffic, platform errors or a network’s own termination are a separate matter and exist at several of them.

Which crypto ad networks refund unspent balances?

Cointraffic, minus a 15% administrative fee, on balances of at least €50 claimed within 30 days of ending the agreement, excluding the first deposit. AdsNetwork, only after 35% of the budget is spent and minus a $1,500 processing fee plus percentage deductions; Blockchain-Ads, at its discretion after the same 35% gate, since the late-September 2026 rewrite that removed its $2,500 fee. TrafficSigma promises a full refund within 30 days of the deposit, on paper. Everyone else says no, or says nothing.

What happens to my balance if I stop using the account?

It shrinks or disappears on a schedule written into the terms. Cointraffic deducts €50 a month from the 150th idle day, rising over time. Bitmedia, DOT, Slise and A-ADS write off or delete the balance after six months (Bitmedia returns 60% as ad credit if you come back within a further three). BuySellAds charges Coin.Network advertisers $100 a month until the balance is zero. HypeLab forfeits after twelve months, and Coinzilla deletes the account after a year, with three warning emails.

Are crypto deposits refunded in crypto?

Sometimes in crypto, rarely at today’s price. Blockchain-Ads and AdsNetwork refund the dollar value at the time of deposit regardless of what the coin did since. Bitmedia’s restoration credit is accounted at the original funding-date rate. Coinzilla returns crypto through its payment processor at the processor’s rate. BuySellAds returns the same coins in calm markets and only the dollar value in volatile ones. Mintfunnel refunds to the paying wallet address only, and warns that exchange wallets may make a refund impossible.

The bottom line

In this industry the refund clause is not where you get your money back; it is where you learn how much of it was ever yours. The networks that write a refund path into the contract price it at 15% or at $1,500, or, since Blockchain-Ads rewrote its policy, leave the price to their discretion, and the ones that write the friendliest promise are not always the ones with a platform behind it. Read the three clauses — refund, inactivity, termination — before the deposit, size the first deposit to the minimum, pause early, and put the idle date in the calendar. For what else the contracts hide, our seven red flags in network terms is the companion piece; our 2026 ranking weighs the refund posture alongside everything else.

Reviewed in full

• Bitmedia 6.5/10

  The Web3 ad veteran with deep targeting — and a thinning footprint on premium crypto media.

• Coinzilla 9/10

  The default choice in crypto advertising — quietly displacing older rivals.

• HypeLab 7/10

  Ads where the wallets already are — the most engineering-dense young network in the niche.

• Blockchain-Ads 4.5/10

  The biggest claims in crypto advertising — behind a $10,000 door and a 2.7-star record.

• Cointraffic 7.5/10

  Premium crypto inventory and the friendliest payouts in the niche — three doors in, from €500 marketplace to €3,000 managed.

• CoinAdMedia 4.5/10

  Marquee placements and traffic stats that no one — including arithmetic — will vouch for.