Bid bots are a tricky issue.. I think I would think of them as paid promotion, like marketing. It can be good or bad... We often point to the trending page (of scammers) as the most obvious misuse of the bots. However, there are people who use them to try and get exposure for a well written piece.
That's true. I see Steem Monsters using them all the time. They have thousands of followers and get plenty of upvotes on every post, and their quality is about as high as you can get. Still, they use bidbots. Yes, it's a marketing expense.
Anyway, great that you were able to circle back and readjust your findings in light of some new information! An incredibly rare trait these days!
I don't like to be wrong.