Why doesnt Google Adwords show ads?

[Big]

Ive got a campaign with adwords going. Its been going for a year. However when i do a check on my main keywords, I notice that yhere are.no yellow or side.ads, even though I havent used my budget, and I would assume companies bigger than mine have huge budgets.
So why dont ads show all the time? Is it adwords or my browser settings (chrome)?

[Vanessa]

Check the setting of your google adwords campaign.

[Chris]

So why dont ads show all the time?
-----
They are not supposed to .. plus, most likely:
1. you set too low price for click
2 - Other set bigger price for click on the same keyword
3 - of couse there can be settings concerns like geographical etc.

Anyway - in most cases offer higher price for click - that should help.

[Abdul Karim]

The ad preview tool is the correct way to check whether your ads are displaying. Because it prevents false impressions counts from accumulating for all advertisers - it also gives you a ad status message saying which ad group/camapign is most likely to trigger ads for this keyword and if they're not displaying; why they're not.

It could be ad dissaporval reasons. Maybe the geographic match is different, maybe your bid is too low, or your daily budget is too low so the ads are displaying very infrequently.