Alternatives? Try MSN AdCenter and Yahoo!Search Marketing (but only if you get the Panama interface). Don’t use anything else without a decent click fraud detection and reporting system. You are reasonably safe from click fraud on Google, Y!SM and MSN AdCenter if you stick to keyword search. Avoid contextual search without a good click identification system.

The “Active” thing - it was an attempt to simplify a previously more complex field that included information about why the adverts weren’t running. Users found the plethora of reasons confusing, it seems. So it was turned into “active/inactive”. But that disguises a host of internal states that “active” represents and also a bunch of different reasons that “inactive” represents. We’ve become quite good at interpreting what Google means, by looking at the other signs and signals. The value of the MinCPC tells you meaningful information, for example. They just don’t document it.

I think that at this point, they are just trying to attract new advertisers so they can leach our keywords and add them to their keyword tool…They’re probably using to somehow make Google search smarter, as well.

Have you found a good alternative yet? I was looking at AdBrite, but its a different animal (differently delivery).