I've for a site about camping which displays adsense and thought it would go good with one of my offers so I created an adwords account about an hour or so ago and setup a image ad and billing info, from what I understand it's all setup, approved and ready to go. However my ads have zero clicks an zero impressions - yet I've set my CPM to $4.50. So my question, is $4.50 CPM way to low or does it take a while before google starts throwing your ads in the mix of others?
From my experience, which isnt much, it will take a little bit before adwords will report new impressions/clicks. Im not sure how long its been since you set up your campaign but just give it some time.
It takes a while for you impressions too update, they update every so often. Also, the ads don't appear straight away from my knowledge.
I can confirm both of these statements. Your ads don't appear instantly (nor do regular adwords from my experience)
you are using site target campaign that only use content network (adsense ads) do not use search network (google ads) - content network ads need to be approved by a reviser before receive go to the network, so your impressions will no begin on the next 5 businesdays. $4.50 is a medium-high value - you pay $4.50 per 1000 impressions, lets say you get CTR = 0.4% as you're not very experienced in doing ads - you will pay about $1.10 per click - its it ok for you?
It can take 2 - 5 days for new CPM ads to start showing...assuming your max CPM is set high enough. The problem is you'll have no idea if your CPM is high enough - you just have to wait and see if you start getting impressions. Usually if I don't see impressions from new CPM campaigns in 48 - 72 hours (not including weekends, lol) I up my bid until I can get some action.