Personally I would probably still be online just as much regardless of the Auto Bid
i probadly don't explain it enough, normally you get money for loading an ad if you are online and just check sometimes if you got mail or a forum reply - you are shown online but didn't reload the ads, In a bidding war, you reload the page at least every 3 minutes, probadly more often.
Normally online games get only very small money for this reloads, because it is known that there only few users on those sites who are responsible for many "reloads", but is it still money and probdaly the biggest part of the "cake" the BB earn.
I agree that bidding wars can be fun, and this is still the case, you won't know whether you are bidding against a person or their Auto Bid.
in my eyes a auto bid should be bidding pretty instant, so you'll riase it and see you have to raise again and so one ... This would annoy me, and i think i am not alone with it - so you should choose generally betwenn this systems.
he Auto Bid is just handy, and allows you to bid on a player that you might not otherwise be able to bid for because the auction ends at a time when you have work, or when you would be asleep.
You actuallly could bid the money you like to pay for him, even with the old system ;)