another question is (and we may not know the answer): how would the top payout would have fared without being promoted. in other words, maybe the posts that received most payout would have received the same payouts without being promoted.
I'm asking this because of the many inconsistencies: the posts with huge promotion and very little payout :)
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This is exactly why this analysis is constrained to 'generally speaking', and why there is no commentary on individual post data.
It is impossible to determine causation with any degree of certainty. For instance, this post was promoted too, and just recently upvoted by both Ned and Dan. However, how could I know, with high degree of certainty that the exposure from promotion brought them here? What if the post was actually referred to them by someone else, who saw it in steemit.chat, or is perhaps my follower, or someone who just likes to scroll trough entire trending page every day.
Given the lack of information, any 'evidence' to support a case would be anecdotal at best.
Perhaps with due time, as the sample size grows, we could infer some patterns. Right now however, we simply don't know.
To add to my previous answer, perhaps it would be interesting to also look at other variables, such as increase of followers post-promotion, or count of votes/comments in compare to non-promoted posts by the same author.
The sample size would have to be statistically significant to draw conclusions, and I will probably make a follow-up in due time.