the biggest incentive (I see) for using CEX.io/Ghash.io is one major thing, a lot of pool owners have said no to...
auto-payouts with splits by percentage
Which makes it tons easier when I have a friend that wants to throw some money down on a miner and have me toss in the rest + host it, then I just have to put in an address and what % he gets, what % I get... and nothing else. No more screwing around with spreadsheets, no more bullshit.
Awhile back I asked several 'group buy leaders' in PM how they did the split %'s on shares in miners, the answer I always got back was 'spreadsheet'. Seriously, a spreadsheet... I was debating on making something to handle the splitting for myself in PHP or some other language, however CEX.io/Ghash.io came along, 0% pool fee, splits everything easily, bam, sold.
Not to mention when people ask me why I use it, I tell them that and... then they start using it for the same reason. Obviously a feature a lot of people overlooked, plus merged mining in IXC, DVC, NMC is also a damn good perk.
EDIT: Yes, I did copy/paste this from my post in the other thread. I would like to add in the fact, Ghash.io continually is updating their interface and services, something not seen much from pool owners these days, not of this speed anyway.
What are the cost of these incentives when you are holding a paperweight at some point and all your "payouts" are in the form of private keys that are worth nothing? What if all these great incentives aren't the result of supply and demand, rather artificially propped up in hopes of luring miners in so a 51% can be achieved?