Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion is an advanced feature that can help make your adverts more relevant to a diverse audience. To use keyword insertion, you place a short piece of code into your ad text. Each time the ad shows, AdWords will automatically replace the code with the keyword that triggered the ad.  Find out more about Dynamic Keyword Insertion and how it works.

We were using this advanced technique for a client and were struggling to get the search terms to trigger. We tried everything - we analysed the various blogs on the topic and we were sure that we were doing everything right.  The only issue that we thought might be causing the problem was the fact that the Quality Score was 3 on the keywords that were NOT triggering the keyword insertion - we had to turn to Google to clear this up.  Below is what they said - which is a confirmation that you HAVE to get your QS above a certain level of Google will simply not enable keyword insertion.  And you know what, I agree with them - the ads should be high quality, relevant and targeted.

Google says:

Thank you for your patience. Keyword insertions only work if the keywords

meet a certain quality threshold. For keywords in the ad group that have

low quality scores, the default ad texts would be used instead of the

keyword insertion. This is the reason why your keywords that have a low

quality score are not inserted into your ad text through dynamic keyword

insertion.

Maintaining high-quality ads for both users and advertisers is important

to AdWords. Your keyword's Quality Score reflects your clickthrough rate

(CTR), plus your keyword, ad text, and landing page content. (To learn

more about how Quality Score is calculated, please visit

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10215&hl=en_US.)

To help ensure that your ad appears for a specific keyword and includes

this keyword in the ad text, please manually create the ad. Such ads that

do not use keyword insertion are considered 'static text ads.' The static

ad you create can appear with your specific keyword when your dynamic ad

is not eligible to appear with that keyword.

Anthony Quigley