The sponsorship model is theoretically still a great business model for blogs: companies benefit from reaching a specific audience (eg dev tools sponsoring on a tech blog), and having their brand viewed favorably next to the host (especially if the blog is known for its quality). Of course, that only works if there is a functional referral ecosystem from search engines and social media…and that ecosystem was trashed by social media and now AI overviews is all but killing it off forever.