Here's another example: Keyword: Telephone Lotto Inactive for search Increase quality or bid £2.50 to activate Poor Minimum bid: £2.50 Creative: Win £100 Instantly with our telephone lotto game Enter free now! Of course, Telephone lotto is also featured prominently on the landing page...
I just spoke to google and they agree with me that being in a competitive sector is going to drive the min cpc up. They said that my quality score could be improved in some cases but that the price others are willing to bid IS an important factor in the determination of the min CPC.
It doesn't really matter what somebody told you at Google, it's still not true. I'm bidding on [bad credit mortgages] at the moment, and I have a minimum bid of £0.03. But I have to pay over £6 ($12) per click to appear in 6th place in the results, because it's one of the most competitive terms there are. The minimum bid is in no way related to what other people are doing.
It's the cost per click that I'm talking about really CustardMite, not the minimum that I bid. Perhaps that's where we've gotten confused. i.e. when a keyword is inactive for search and adwords asks you to pay say, £5 per click to activate it, that's when what other people are bidding comes into play (alongside your quality score)...
Sorry - a keyword is inactive if your minimum bid is higher than your actual bid. Here are Google's tips on what to do if your keywords are inactive: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6144&query=inactive&topic=&type=f&onClick= Basically, you can: Improve Your Quality Score Increase Your Bids Delete Your Keywords Do Nothing (??) It really is nothing to do with what your competitors are doing.
OK, so I spoke to another google representative and he was of the opinion that the landing page WAS the problem, just like CustardMite said. There are three areas of concern and I'm going to start a new thread because this changes the subject somewhat. Here's the link... http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=4240485#post4240485