I dunno.. Last week Kontera issued a "real" press release that quoted me and had a link to my site.. So far i've gotten like 4 links from it, and very little traffic.. i suppose that if the topic was more exciting it would have gotten more play, but with the number of press releases flooding the web every day, it would have to be pretty darn popular..
For the opening of Domain Dunk we used a press release. This is the first time we used this method for a launch. Compared to the other methods we used it definately delivers the best bang for its buck. It surely depends on the product, service, or news; however, ours went very well with some BIG name exposure for our industry. We will definatley be doing it again.