Promotions are for the benefit of eBay not of sellers or of buyers.
If eBay sees a lack of listings in a category, they might give a promotion to sellers in that category to bump up the number of items available.
But more important, as of March 2019, eBay started paying dividends on its profits.
Before the only way to make money on eBay stock was to buy it when the price was low and sell it when it rose.
And stockholders demanded those surges and drops. These stockholders are gamblers more than investors.
Those stockholders were not contributing anything* to the company however. They bought their stock on the secondary market and not a penny actually went to eBay. This is the Chicago School of investment.
The dividend seeking stockholder is more interested in a steady company that makes a real profit from its work and pays part of that profit to the stockholders. This is the kind of investing is the Warren Buffet school.
The gamblers will sell off their stocks to dividend seekers, like pension plans and others who want a steady income, not a fast buck.
I suspect one result will be that eBay will not be spinning off profitable parts of the company (like Paypal a loss that was forced by Wall Street shark Carl Icahn) any more.
Another will be a rise in fees since money from sellers is a more steady source than fees from sales.
Canadians haven't seen Managed Payments yet, but one difference from PP, is that MP charges a 29c non-refundable fee on every sale, while PP charges 30c on every transaction. (There can be several sales within one transaction.)
And of course, since listing fees are a steady source of income, those site wide Free Listings will disappear in favour of more targeted category promotions.
*Complicating things, upper echelon executives were being paid partly with stocks or stock options. It was to their personal benefit that the stock was volatile.
