A lot of depends from the project. Now gaming NFT projects attract a lot of attention and their airdrops are very popular. Just see the results of this airdrop
https://twitter.com/spacegrime/status/1396545308809601025 and you can see how popular gaming airdrops and how many users they have.
Now many of the projects are actively use airdrops to attract attention to the coin. Airdrop help to attract attention but a lot of depends from the project how new and useful it is for people.
Airdrops are actively used in cryptocurrency. Espesially airdrops popular in NFT games and for meme tokens. Airdrops help to create a big community of users.