First of all, remember that even when your ad is running as it should, you will not see your ad every time you search for your keywords. How often your ad appears will depend on your budget, the price you set for your keywords, the number of other advertisers who choose the same keywords, and many other factors. The best way to tell if your ad is running is to check the impression and click statistics in your AdWords account.

There are several other reasons why you may be unable to see your ad. The most common of those reasons are listed below, along with ways to address them.

I just created an ad and cannot see it yet.

• Account Not Activated
  In order to activate your account and begin running your ads, you must successfully enter valid billing information. If you pay with a credit card or other postpay option, your account will be activated once you submit that billing information. Your ads may begin showing and accruing costs immediately after that. If you're paying with bank transfer or other form of prepayment, it can take 8-10 days or more after you've submitted your billing information for us to receive and process your first payment and activate your account.


• Ad Approval Status
  All ads must comply with our advertising policies. While some ads may run on Google prior to review, others may not run at all until being reviewed and approved by an AdWords Specialist. If your ad is awaiting review, we'll get to it as soon as we can. While your ad is in queue, you can review our advertising guidelines to ensure that your ad complies. Also, note that no ads will show on the Google Network until after being reviewed and approved.


• Ad Location
  Keyword-targeted ads typically appear to the right of or above Google search results. If your Ad Rank is not high enough to place your ad on the first page of search results for a certain keyword, it may appear on a subsequent search result page. To see additional pages of ads, click 'Next' at the bottom of the page, or click the 'More Sponsored Links' link below the column of ads.
  
  If you want your ad to show closer to or on the first page more often, you can improve your Ad Rank by better targeting your keywords, improving your ad text, or by increasing your bid for each click.


• Server Delay
  There may be a brief delay after you create your ads but before the time they are actually shown. Sometimes it takes our servers longer than usual to upload and prepare to serve your ads. Try checking for your ad again after a few hours have elapsed.

I have seen my ad before, but I can't anymore.

• Budget
  When you create your ad and select your keywords, you also select a budget that determines how often your ad can be delivered on Google. We may slow or even stop the delivery of your ad at times each day in order to stay within the daily limit of your budget. To maximize your ad visibility, consider changing your budget to see if your ad appears more often.


• Disapproved Ad
  If an ad doesn't meet our advertising policies, we'll stop your ad from running, and you'll see the phrase 'You have one or more disapproved ads' listed in your health meter. If this is the case, please make the needed edits and save the changes to automatically resubmit your ad to us for review.


• Keyword performance
  If one of your keywords underperforms, it may become inactive and stop triggering your ads. Keywords typically become inactive when they are very general and therefore do not perform very well. For instance, keywords like "phone" or "hotels" may be so general that people who search for it have no interest in your particular product. The best way to monitor your keyword performance is to review the keyword statistics on the My Ad Campaign page. If a keyword is showing no impressions or clicks, you may wish to delete it and select other more targeted keywords instead.

My ad is running and accruing statistics, but I've never been able to see it.

• Geo-targeting
  Your campaign is targeted to specific countries or areas. If you don't target your own area and language, you won't be able to see your ad. If you have targeted a specific region or city, we may not be able to obtain internet protocol (IP) information that indicates if you are in that city. In this case, we wouldn't know which regional ads to deliver to you. If we can't determine the searcher's location, we'll show nationally-targeted ads instead of regionally-targeted ads.
• Language targeting
  When you sign up for Starter Edition you target your campaign to a specific language, which means that your ads are visible only to users whose Google interface is set to that language. You can view your Google interface language setting by clicking the 'Preferences' link to the right of the Search Box on the Google homepage. If your Google interface language isn't included in your campaign language targeting selection, you may want to edit your campaign language targeting in order to see your ad.