Yeah, I (sort of) agree... some of the larger bid bots (for now anyway) seem to be a waste of money... spending 2 or 3 SBD for a single upvote resulting in a vote less than the bid seems that it only benefits the bot at the end of the day... however, there are a few bots targeted at Minnows specifically that, with the little anecdotal evidence I have gathered so far, do benefit the author. Specifically when it comes to being discovered as a result of getting onto the hot/trending lists.
Like I said... I hope that in the coming weeks/months, these bots will become "useless" to me, and I won't be needing them, but for now they are helping... Time will tell.
I see it as advertising, and I'm not against that at all. I did see a post that used over 200 SBD towards bid bots do really well today. This was also a newer account with less than 100 followers. So, kinda jealous on that one, but I'm not ready to try that just yet! Lol