At the risk of being branded something bad I'll throw my hat on this:
You could do with some other advertising options (I know, bear with me).
It is weird that most of the ads I see are for whatever comes through the ad program and that there isnt any direct promotion from gaming brands or game companies. I've worked in marketing with large budgets and was allways happy to throw a comparatively small amount at a fun project (small for our budget, but big for the publication). While proving ROI is great, sometimes just being able to point at something and say 'look here is our brand support' helps.
So (as an example) why not ad a custom box/ad on the right below the current ads, limited to game companies and another for hardware, call them "corporate gaming overlord supporters of the site", charge them a couple of $k per month each and then give them their own landing page tied to the box.
Reach out to your contacts and ask them to throw it over to the marketing department and let them know its a community goodwill promo/ad vehicle for relatively low cost.
You could even add an extra link to a post that talks about them or their game, more links more seo.
I do love the lack of enshittification and old school simplicity here, which is what bring me back. But I do think there are a few more avenues for you to lean on the corporate world for funding.
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Diablo & Diablo 2 for the DS, it makes sense Blizzard!