I bet there's a free relay broadcasting our notes so we can have this conversation 😂. Seriously though, some people think that companies will run relays to support their other products. We'll probably see relays specific to different types of apps. I still wonder if someone will figure out a clever way to do free-relays that are ad supported.

I wouldn't put any of that under "good progress". I think ad supported relays will be acceptable to the typical user of centralized systems, but I've only seen disdain for the idea from current Nostr users, and no mention of designs for it.