Poor Quality Sidelines New Adwords Campaign

Pay to be first or you don't get to show.

[graywolf]

I tried creating a new campaign last night and came across a problem I've never seen before. My campaign had 40 keyword phrases, after entering all of my data and going back to check, 38 of them had "inactive for search increase quality or bid" messages telling me I had to increase my bid to $5.00 and in some cases $10.00. How Google was able to determine my ads were of low quality within 60 seconds seemed a bit ridiculous. I tinkered a little bit thought I did something wrong and started from scratch. I isolated my 2 best phrases and the remaining 38 into their own ad groups. I got the same messages again. I tried raising the price all the way up to $4.99 and the "low quality" message persisted. This is not a $5 keyword but as a test I upped the bid to $5. Within 15 minutes my ad was running.

Here's the kicker I was siting in the number 1 spot. Now if I was at the bottom I could see the logic behind the $5.00 minimum bid. I don't want to bid $5 nor do I want to be #1. So what's the deal with "forcing" me to bid that high if I want my ad to show? Suggestions, opinions?

[Israel]

Graywolf,

I've had a hard time understanding that one too. If it will take at least $5.00 for my ad to show due to its poor quality, irrelevancy, whatever, then why when I meet that bid, I'm suddenly in the coveted "hot spot"? And I shall remain there as long as I meet this "mininum" bid.

For years, we've been told that the "blue boxes" are reserved for those truly exceptional ads that earned such honour due to CTR and relevancy. Many keywords don't even have one ad in the "hot spot", you'll notice. We've been told that means no ad meets the exceptional criteria to deserve such.

Yet my formerly unacceptable ad always jumps way above all the others, right to #1 or #2 as soon as I raise my bid. In my case, it's more like 40 cents rather than $5.00.

Seems if my ad was that poor, the $5.00 mininum should barely qualify me to show and dump me at the bottom of the column or even on a second or third page of ads.

I'd rather pay less for a 3-6 position based on the ROI that I see. If you make your ad unique and it stands out, it will attract people to click. Searchers don't by and large expect the top ad to provide the best value for their money.

Something is not working as intended... (stating the obvious)

Israel