For weight and balance purposes, isn't it better if the passengers are evenly distributed throughout the cabin?
For example, if a flight has 16 empty seats, wouldn't it be best if there were 4 open middle seats in each of the 4 quadrants of the plane? And, if there is any empty bin space, that is also equally distributed throughout the overheads?
If so, encouraging passengers to take the first available middle seat actually makes the plane nose heavy.