Yup, I've worked on both and the balloons are generally just better platforms given current constraints. They can actually be steered rather accurately, if you're ever bored go look at the ADSB logs of the Aerostar balloons, they regularly can be found wandering the country and if you look at the altitude history you can start to see how they work.

They're generally more environmentally friendly too, worst case you have to go ask a farmer to retrieve the thing out of their field.