I like to think of things relative to the old way (before the internet) days....
In those days, I'd pay my monthly rent for my B&M store and have my position on a street somewhere. Some people would find me by noticing me when they wandered by.
To get more people to find me I would advertise. Theoretically, the more I spent on advertising, the more people would know about me and come by.
The bigger I got, the bigger and more expensive my ads (think of the car dealership ads in the paper vs a guy trying to sell his car in the classifieds).
To my mind, and I know from having said this before not everyone agrees with me, here on ebay/the internet it is no different. Those that can afford to advertise more will sell more.
I've generally experienced positive results from the various iterations of additional paid advertising here (and on all the other sites I use) over the last 19 years. Those things that didn't return well, I quit using, exactly the same concept as I used to do when my only option was (expensive) print advertising in those days long before we found ourselves here online.
So to my mind, ebay isn't really burying anything, the people who're paying for "full page ads" will be seen more than people paying for "eighth page" sized ads. It is our choice whether we want to participate in these (aka pay for them) or not. As rose? I believe pointed out, in earlier discussions, if everyone started using them the same way they wouldn't differentiate/work anymore/enough. In that case people would stop using them. Perhaps that's why we've seen so many variations of paid advertising type opportunities over the last 20 years here.
It does mean that if I have a mind to start selling brand new cell phones I am going to have a very tough time breaking into the market competing against all the big players.....which really isn't any different than it has always been.
