Two types of minimum bid issues?

I'm confused

[JBrown]

I'm familiar with the following message in the 'Status' column:

1. "Inactive for search: Increase quality or bid X to activate"

However, I don't understand when a keyword is marked as 'Active' in the 'Status' column and the following message shows up when you mouse over the magnifying glass:

2. "This keyword isn't showing ads: This keyword has a low Quality Score, so the minimum bid exceeds your current bid."

If that's the case, then shouldn't I be seeing the keyword marked as 'Inactive' in the Status column?

Or does number 2 mean that the keyword isn't showing my ads, but hasn't quite reached the threshold of 'Inactive' status?

Basically, I'm asking if number 1 and number 2 are the same thing.

[TrafficGal]

yes they basically mean the same....it's showing you as active because you have an active bid on that kw, however, due to the fact that the minimum bid is higher than what you are bidding, the message also means you are off....
I agree, it's rather confusing....you will always see that you are active unless you pause the kw.
it's like a temp gage, you might set the heater button to ON, but unless you set the temp to a certain number, you won't actually get any heat....

[sailorjwd]

if you have no impressions then it is likely that the keyword has been 'suspended' due to poor global history.

[JBrown]

sailor,

I think that's the case. Very few of these phrases have any ads showing when I run a query on Google.

I just wish it would state that more explicitly. These phrases should be getting a few hundred queries per year. I was cleaning out some zero impression keywords and was surprised to see some fairly common search phrases mixed among them.