If I place image only ads from AS does that mean I get paid like a CPM program? The reason I am aking is that I think someone has either bought the ad space or keyword for my site and I am getting money for impressions instead of clicks.
Um, yeah, you know not what you speak, my friend. Adsense started life as a PPC program (pay per click) but they also have CPM, which pays the publisher based on CPM ad rates per 1,000 impressions, i.e. the image ads. So answering the OP's question: Image ads doesn't necessarily mean someone has site-targeted your site for advertisement, but it could also be you chose the default ad setting, which is text AND image, so Adsense serves the ad that, theoretically, should pay you the most -- rather it be the text or the image ads.
The reason I ask is that Shopzilla has been appearing in our skyscraper on the site now for what seems like 3 straight days and when I checked AS very early in the morning it showed zero clicks for the site, but it had produced 20 cents from the impression. On another note we have been using Fast Clicks for the CPM, but $5-7 a month is not worth our time in my option.
Shopzilla is a pretty generic CPM image ad. To really notice anything with CPM advertising, you need visitors, and lots of them. What is your daily average uniques?
The site has only been up for about 5 full months and we average 14-15k uniques a month. So thats only about 450 -460 a day.
Hmm, yeah, that is pretty small. To be honest, it wouldn't matter which CPM network you go with. 450/day won't equal a whole lot of earnings I'm afraid. You might want to stick with PPC ala Adsense.
That is what we are rethinking right now and when the uniques and visits go up we can try the other stuff again.