For quite some time now ive adopted a policy of spending a certain amount of time on ebay, if the wonders of ebay make things more complex and as such usually more time consuming , that leaves less time to list new items, relisting have long ceased.
My thoughts are that they sell certain aspects of advertisements to external companies based on the number of clicks, or pages viewed, hence what you stated as your experience with the buttons.
Im currently listing at 50 % of what i did a couple of years back, i cant see it increasing the way ebay operate.