Yes, I completely agree with you on that point. The company could convince users to spend on promotional items better, which would help spread the word.
There are a few other ideas along these lines that I am writing about and will be publishing on the platform soon. I like your thinking!
I think @noisy mentioned the idea of placing posts that have been promoted randomly in the hot/trending section such as ads and giving them more visibility.
There's definitely a need for improved curation and display on the Steemit platform. I use it primarily on a laptop browser, so my experience may be different than many users.
That's actually something I've been thinking about. But a bit more radical ^^ Something like; Whenever someone promotes its post, instead of the promoted tab, it gets like 10x (or whatever feels reasonable) the value of trending/hot page value.