Anyone who has run keyword advertising on Google's Adwords network knows that the budget you set for your ads has little to do with how much you will actually spend on ads. In fact, most people realize that a low budget actually reduces the chances of your ads displaying at all during the day regardless if you have hit your budget figure or not.

Yesterday I realized how far off this budget tool actually is. I have a small campaign for a merchant and had my budget set for $5,000 per day, significantly higher than necessary to insure my ads would display at full capacity. I had generated less than $7 in clicks for the day and my ads stopped running. I ran the ad diagnostic tool and it said I had reached my daily budget.

I have Google looking into the problem, but for now you may want to set your campaigns to the maximum budget setting of $250,0000 per day just to make sure they run at all!