I have the same ads linking to the same site with both AdWords and Yahoo.
With Yahoo, the display of my ads were delayed for a few days while being reviewed, I assume by a human, and then they started showing. Yahoo's quality score shows me at 4 out of 5 "bars."
With AdWords, my ads started immediately, I was getting a fair CPC rate for the keywords, but after a few days my ads or my site were determined to be of inadequate quality and AdWords started asking for $5 or $10 minimum bids.
Is this because AdWords relies on a computer to check my site and ads and Yahoo relies on a human being? If not, what would explain the difference?
And if someone tells me it's because AdWords has higher quality demands and offers a better user experience, I'm probably going to be very skeptical based on the quality of ads & sites I see when I search on the same keywords at Google and review the sponsored link ads that appear.
FarmBoy
Whether human or not, Google is more 'sensitive' than most, and receives much more feedback. While you may well be "skeptical based on the quality of ads & sites I see", you do not know the details of their deals - and you do not know if their ads (or yours) have been the subject of complaint.
It's usually best to consider the issue on the basis of your site - not comparisons, where you cannot have all the info.
