Info Product & Course Ads Cheatsheet: Funnels, Benchmarks, Compliance
Funnel types, observed CPA and AOV bands by ticket, creative formats — and the income-claim landmines that get courses banned, refunded and charged back.
Course and info-product ads do not fail because the VSL was 4 minutes too long. They fail because the funnel ticket, the refund maths and the income claim were never designed as one system. This sheet maps observed CPA/AOV bands, funnel types, and the earnings-claim landmines that blow up accounts.
Pick a funnel before you pick a hook
Low-ticket ($27-67) front-ends behave like DTC: you can purchase-optimise, you need volume, and the backend (upsell, subscription, high-ticket application) has to carry LTV. Mid-ticket ($197-497) self-liquidating offers can pay for themselves on the front-end if refunds stay in band. High-ticket ($997-2,497+) is an application or webinar-to-call machine: CPL and show-rate matter more than ROAS on day one. Running a $27 impulse ad into a 45-minute VSL, or a $1,997 offer into a 15-second TikTok with a 'buy now' button, is how accounts print refunds. Match duration, destination and optimisation event to the ticket, then write creative.
Income-claim landmines — read this before you shoot
Anything that implies the viewer will make money, replace a salary, quit a job, or get 'students' results' is an earnings claim. 'I made $10k in 30 days with this method', 'my students average $8k/month', a Stripe-dashboard montage, 'replace your 9-5', and 'results not typical' in 8pt under a Ferrari are all in the blast radius. FTC earnings-claim guidance still applies on Meta. Platforms will reject, restrict the vertical, or let the ad run until chargebacks cluster. The safe pattern: teach a skill, show the curriculum, and if you mention money at all it is your own substantiated figure with the period and a 'not typical' line that is visually equal to the claim — not a footnote. No backup file? Cut the line.
Refunds and chargebacks are a media KPI
A 2.8x ROAS on a $297 course with a 28% 30-day refund rate is a losing product. Info buyers regret fast when the ad oversold transformation and the members area is a Notion dump. Track 3-day, 7-day and 30-day refund plus chargeback separately from processor-side fraud. If refunds spike after a specific ad, that ad is the problem even if CPA looks pretty — it bought the wrong promise. Tight guarantees ('15-day, must complete module 1') reduce abuse without recreating a 'get rich or it's free' vibe that attracts the wrong click.
Creative formats that match the ticket
UGC rant-to-camera works for low-ticket skill products ('the checklist I wish I had'). Mid-ticket wants a mechanism: the framework named in 8 seconds, then proof of the teaching, not the Lamborghini. High-ticket wants a problem-aware webinar hook and a calendar CTA, not a checkout. VSL ads should not be the VSL; they should be a 20-45s reason to click into the VSL. Talking-head volume is the bottleneck. Generating persona rants and mechanism explainers from a course URL in Klip Kanvas is fair game for skill-based hooks — it is not fair game for fake student testimonials or fake Stripe screenshots.
How to use the locked sheet
Six tables sit behind the gate: funnel-by-ticket economics, observed US paid-social bands, the income-claim swap list, creative format specs, refund/chargeback gates, and a 30-day launch calendar. If a row in the claim table is marked banned, it does not ship in the ad, the landing, a webinar slide or email one. Compliance is not a legal appendix you read after the creative wins — it is the media plan. A banned earnings line that hook-tests well is still a banned line; kill it before it trains the account on the wrong promise.
6 locked tables: funnel economics by ticket, observed CPM/CTR/CPA/AOV bands, income-claim landmines with banned-to-allowed swaps, format specs, refund/chargeback gates, and a 30-day launch calendar for mid-ticket.
Unlock the full cheatsheet
Enter your email and we'll instantly unlock the complete cheatsheet — plus send you fresh ad playbooks every month.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Ready to put this into practice?
Create your first AI UGC video ad in minutes — no filming, no actors, no editing.
Try Klip Kanvas freeMore in this section
Win/Loss Creative Readout Sheet
A scoring sheet for creative tests: sample-size floors, win/loss/inconclusive bands by metric, what to scale vs kill vs iterate, and the one-page readout the next sprint actually uses.
TikTok Spark Ads Cheatsheet
Spark Ads as a lookup sheet: authorization codes, post-first rules, inherited social proof, CTA overlay, expiry bands and QA versus cold in-feed uploads.
Ready to make ads like these?
Paste a product link and Klip Kanvas writes the script, casts the creator and renders the ad — no filming, no actors, no editing.