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“Why Can't I See My ad?”

Unlike a physical/print publication, where your ad is “permanently” displayed, an online ad at the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask Jeeves, etc.) is much more dynamic in nature. First, a person needs to type in a keyword or a keyword phrase (e.g. “cosmetic dentist”) for an ad to appear. We purchase hundreds – and sometimes several thousand – keyword phrases based on the nature of the advertiser’s business, the competitive landscape, and estimates from the publishers. However, the fact that a user types in that exact same keyword phrase that we have uploaded to the publisher (search engines) does not guarantee that your ad will be displayed at all times to all users. Here are some common reasons why:

Budget – This is the most common reason why an ad may not be displayed at a publisher. Some keyword phrases are entered thousands of times a day. If your ad were displayed each and every time someone entered that keyword phrase, and if your ad were clicked on each and every time, you could end up spending thousands of dollars a day. Given that we try and spread out your campaign budget over the duration of your campaign, we set daily budget limits at the publishers. Based on these daily budget limits, publishers have their own rules for when they decide to show a specific ad and when they decide not to. They are trying to meet the daily budget limits we have set. The ONLY way to guarantee that your ad will be displayed at all times is to have an unlimited budget.

Editorial Status – It sometimes takes publishers up to a week to review all ads and to distribute them throughout their entire network of sites. During that time, the ad may be displayed on a limited basis. In addition, ads that once were available online may be taken offline to be reviewed again. Most publishers use automated tools to review the ads for the first time and then pass some of the ads on for human review. During these review periods, the ads may either be placed on hold or rejected due to inappropriate content. In many cases, we have to resubmit your ads more than once in order to meet their editorial guidelines. Lastly, some publishers reject keywords that have never received any traffic in the past.

Performance – Publishers may decide to “turn off” or disable certain keywords we purchase because they are not performing well. By that, they decide that the content of the advertiser’s website is not close enough to the content of the ad or to the keywords, and they will disable those keywords until changes are made to the ads, the website, or both. In most cases, very general words – for example, “lawyer”, will be disabled very quickly, because they are used very frequently, but usually are not specific enough to generate clicks on an ad. Very low click-thru rates – that is, the rate at which users click on your ad based on the number of times your ad is displayed – will result in keywords being disabled.

Keywords Not Uploaded – In some cases, we do not upload all keywords for a particular advertiser. This mostly relates to the number #1 issue above: budget. Based on experience, if an advertiser’s budget is too low to meet the potential traffic from all keywords, we do not upload all keywords. That is because those keywords will most likely be disabled anyway given that the publisher will also try to limit the display of keywords to meet daily budget limits.

Part Deux: This is from Google...

Here it is from Google:

There are several common reasons you may be unable to see your ad. To help you understand the problem, you can:

1. Check back later.
Although in most cases your ad is up and running almost immediately after activating your account, sometimes there is a server upload delay and it takes more than a few minutes for your ads to start running. If you still cannot see your ad after an hour and you've checked all of the possibilities below, please contact us to let us know.

2. Check your daily budget.
When you create your ads and select your keywords, we recommend a daily budget for maximum ad delivery on Google. If your daily budget is set lower than the recommended amount, we spread the delivery of your ad throughout the day in order to stay within your budget.

3. Check the approval status of your ad.
If an ad does not meet our Editorial Guidelines, we'll stop your ad from running, and you'll see the word 'Disapproved' listed below that ad. Once you've made the appropriate edits, simply save your changes and your ad will be automatically resubmitted to us for review.

4. Check the performance of your keywords.
If a keyword underperforms, we may disable it or simply slow ad delivery on that keyword until you are able to either edit or delete it. Your ads may also only be showing on certain variations of your broad or phrase matches due to a low relevance factor. The best way to monitor your keyword performance is by reviewing the keyword status column on your keyword summary page.

5. Check your geo-targeting.
You can target your campaign to specific countries, regions, and languages. If you don't target your own area and language, you won't be able to see your ad. To learn how to view and edit your geo-targeting selection, click here. If you're targeting a region or city, sometimes we're unable to obtain internet protocol (IP) information. If we can't determine the searcher's location, we'll show nationally-targeted ads instead of regionally-targeted ads.