I have not received any money from airdrops in this year. You can see many fake airdrop in social media section which is more fake. A good project never distribution free token many time but some project giving free money by promoting airdrop. I think airdrop help promoting for a project marketing.
it was always like this with airdrop in general, there are massive airdrops which piqued the interest of many to follow other airdrop programs then most of airdrop ended up rather shitty.
but I guess that also because airdrop participants increase significantly.