Those promotions are for the benefit of eBay not the seller.
If eBay wants more items in the categories you sell, you are more likely to get promotional offers.
Which is also why Stores subscribers like me rarely see any. We already list as much as we have available and need no encouragement.
BTW- I have had Stores since they became available--even before Stores were in Search! There are other advantages with lower fees and the Vacation option being the most important.
It will be interesting to see if eBay will continue offering Promotional Listings now that they are giving dividends to shareholders. Before, they were working to the quarterly reports, trying to have stock prices high at least at those times, and allowing them to fall in between. Lots of listings encouraged the punters.
With dividends companies tend to concentrate on profits since that is where dividends come from, not share price, which has no bearing on the profitability of the company.
That doesn't mean eBay will be a better place to sell, the purpose of the company becomes encouraging profits, which means encouraging sales but also taking in steady fees like Store subcriptions, and listing options.
It may be one of the (many) reasons behind dropping short term FP listings in favour of GTC, to encourage sellers to keep their listings up and available for purchase, instead of hoarding them against Free Listing promotions.
YMMV.
