No other ads for my phrase, so why won't my ad show?

[dickbaker]

I started a new campaign yesterday for a widget, an Acme X23. I bid a decent amount, but was told by the automated bid critic that my keyword rank was low, and that my bid was below the first page bid. The "bid critic" gave an estimate that was 50% higher than my bid for a first page placement.

This isn't a competitive phrase. If I do a search for it, I usually find no ads, or maybe I'll find one or two.

So why wouldn't Adwords put my ad on the first page if there's no other advertisers?

[RhinoFish]

Why is my first page bid high if there are no ads showing?
[support.google.com...]

[dickbaker]

Thanks for the link, RhinoFish. I'll do some reading there.

It's funny, though. I'll mouse over my keyword, and Google will say that the ad isn't showing, or that my bid is much too low for the first page, or that my quality score is too low, or some combination. If I do a search using that phrase, though, I'll often find my ad right at or near the top.

Then there's times when there's no ad on the search page. If I look at the keywords' relevancy to my page content, I can't see how it can be any more relevant. If the page is selling Acme XYZ widgets, and the title of the page is "Acme XYZ widgets,", and the <h1> tag is "Acme XYZ widgets," and the text on the page mentions "Acme XYZ widgets," and my ad's keywords are "Acme XYZ widgets", how much more relevant can I get?