One way is to somehow elevate the status of promoted posts again. People are prepared to pay for visibility (and ROI) via the upvote bots. We can at least take care of some of the visibility issues by including promoted posts in our regular feed. Why's that exactly? well, promoted posts burn steem in order to be promoted. That has a small effect on raising the price of steem for everyone while at the same time giving the poster the visibility they want. For sure it doesn't give ROI in the sense an upvote bot does but it reduces the "i need visibility and will pay for it" argument in favour of the upvote bots.
Would you accept a promoted post or two, clearly marked as such, in your feed?