Why doesn't my specific ad display?

don't understand how google decides which ads to display

[wingslevel]

I have a large account and recently adwords has really stumped me. Let's say that the user types in "acme blue widgets" - I own 3 keywords that could display 1. "Acme" - the manufacturer name, 2. "blue widgets" - the name of my category, and 3. "acme blue widgets" - the name of a product group. All of these keywords are phrase matched. None of my ads display.

Well I ran the diagnostic tool and it said that 1. "Acme" doesn't display because "We're unable to show your ad because your Quality Score and CPC are too low for this keyword auction.", and 2. "blue widgets" doesn't display because (ok, you guessed it) "We're unable to show your ad because your Quality Score and CPC are too low for this keyword auction.", and 3. Nothing! not even a mention of "acme blue widgets". Am I right to assume that since the diagnostic tool listed the other two keywords first that it had chosen them over my "acme blue widgets" kw?

OK, now I understand that there is a thing called quality score, but in this case google is actually passing over a keyword which is an exact match of the user query? In my case, this keyword has been up for a month with 0 impressions - since adwords seems determined to display acme and blue widgets first, this ad will probably never see the light of day and it is the most relavent ad (at least among my 3).

In this case, uncharacteristically, google is doing the user a disservice.

[RonnieG]

QS is more than just keywords and ads. The landing page contents (or lack thereof) related to the keywords and ad play into it as well. If keywords, ad contents and landing page contents are all in sync, then minimum bids should be reasonable, in my experience. There may be exceptions, that only G knows, that could cause an exceptionally high minimum bid. These exceptions could include a landing page that is obviously nothing but keyword spam, affiliate or manufacturer links, or lots of totally unrelated stuff, with no "real" content. In other words, and in my opinion, one landing page cannot possibly serve 20 unrelated manufacturers and dozens of unrelated products and still be a good user experience for the consumer.