Quote: ebay would not roll out a change like this without evidence that showed new sales exceeded complaints about the new search results.
generates money. For example, they sell promoted advertising. I tried that a few times, and I could see that it generated no additional views. Now, with automatic views swamping real views for low volume coins, you will never really be able to tell if the boosted advertising actually did anything.
Also, I think it just helps them to generate the illusion of activity to keep sellers engaged. And quite possibly, they are interested to see if spamming offers to uninterested shoppers will result in any spontaneous sales.