I've toyed with Promoted Listings since they first became available on ebay.ca and noticed this morning there is another feature added to it that lets you look at the items that sold using your promotion with sale price and fees paid displayed.
In case anyone is interested in taking a look.
It takes you to a new page that shows your items in like a Sold format. It also allows you to download a CVS file for bookkeeping, I guess.
Hi 'ricarmic' -- you've made some interesting points, food for more thought.
I do have to say that I don't see this as analogous to newspaper ads, mainly because businesses that don't run ads in newspapers aren't also monthly "ad subscribers" of the paper (if you see what I mean).
I think what mostly sticks in my craw is the fact that we're already paying eBay ever-increasing fees to run a store (read: advertising) on their site, and/or to list, supposedly getting value for our money on a scale based on our performance. This seemed fair enough to me, i.e. give sellers who provide the best customer service and maintain the cleanest selling record the best boost in search and visibility. Now anybody and his dog with a dubious performance record can pay for that privilege , which tends to include a whole lot of Chinese sellers in my categories who have deep pockets (not saying you're in that bunch!).
It seems to me that eBay has milked (bilked??) us sellers for all we could bear over the years, and that they needed to find a fresh source of cash in addition to what they're already collecting. They likely realized that sellers who could afford paying premium fees would jump at the chance to go to the head of the table, above sellers with merely perfect performance records.
I think this scheme too will eventually backfire, ironically because the more sellers who are drawn into using it, the less effective it will be. Those with the money to pay will have to fight it out for spots 1 to 10 on page 1 of searches in their categories and may get tired of paying a higher and higher percentage of their profits in order to stay near the top. Unlike newspapers, where ads are scaled to the page they run on, and there are many spots to choose from to run a big ad, there's only one first page in search on eBay. When fees to place in that game get up above 25%, even the Chinese mega-sellers may decide there are better places to list.
But of course all of this will only transpire after eBay has accumulated a lot more cash in excess fees than it otherwise would have. The returning buyers going through Promoted Listings that you mention will only serve to sweeten the pot for eBay while sellers pay higher FVFs.
Personally, if this programme was inevitable, I would have preferred to see it made available only to sellers with a perfect (or near-perfect) performance record (not TRS, that's based mainly on volume). However much that would be a service to buyers, it wouldn't have brought in as much cash for eBay. So here we are.
I'll probably feel compelled to use Promoted Listings at some point simply to keep up, and I suppose that's why I feel resentful. After nearly 12 years of working hard to maintain a spotless record as a seller, I now find that's no longer very relevant in terms of how my items are presented on this site. I feel like a spouse who's been unceremoniously dumped for someone with fewer qualities but a lot more cash.
Sorry for the rant. Some things just need to be gotten off one's chest. 
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