Honestly, if the competition for those keywords is that weak, I'd go for an SEO blitz. I pulled a SEMRUSH profile on your site (other tools exist, I just like that one)

https://www.semrush.com/info/phantomjscloud.com

- Identify keywords you want to target, with decent search volume and not too many strong competitors. Use those words in your headlines and article text - Start a blog and bulk up your articles; knock out 4 - 5 1500+ word articles on the problems you are solving and which audiences would benefit from them - Share those articles on social media - Your site could benefit from additional back-links (you've only got 14); look at your major competitors and see if they are getting links from highly reputable sources. Reach out to those sources and offer them a reason to link to you. Avoid links from spammy sites and low-end blogs (do NOT do the $5 link building package on elance or wherever)...

[There's a ton more, but that will give you a running start on respectable SEO]

AdWords determines your ad's AdRank by its Quality Score (expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience) in addition to your cpc bid.

Perhaps you had a low quality score (below 8), so Google requested a higher CPC to compensate?

thanks for the input, yeah I think I need to do more "inbound marketing" before attempting adwords (display). I have a 4 to 6 quality score, and nothing is displayed unless the CPC is astronomical.

Have you done the calculation on conversion rate you would need at your current SAAS subscription cost to find out how much you could afford to pay per click?

yeah, and it's a lot less than $5! basically I had to stop adwords display ads. It doesn't seem to be usable by startups with non-traditional keywords, at least until I SEO the site more (then will try again)