The whole phenomenon of vote buying has added a steady demand for Steem that comes from dolphins and whales who seek profit by locking away their Steem and selling their votes.
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But there is also other benefits of vote bots, in one hand you have the marketing aspect. Buying votes provides exposure to unseen posts, all platforms like instagram, twitter or Facebook offer similar services, where your posts can be ranked higher if you pay those companies, difference is that in Steem you are paying other token holders, is a new form of Decentralized Marketing.

This is exactly spot-on in my opinion and it's the same message I have been trying to spread regarding the state of voting bots on the platform.

There are definitely some issues with how the system works right now - both with voting bots and the Steem platform in general. Many people see those problems and just think that getting rid of voting bots altogether is the solution. In my opinion that's both not really possible and wouldn't actually solve anything even if it were.

Instead my approach has been to identify and try to fix the issues while simultaneously improving and increasing the value that voting bots provide to the platform.

I only saw this post because it has used voting bots to promote it, and now I've upvoted it, followed @chitty, and also gave him my vote for witness. This is both a great post and a great example of how voting bots provide significant value to publishers on the platform by increasing their visibility and helping them increase their following and earnings.