It is far profitable than fixed payments of bitcoin mode.  I mean giving the ICO tokens away is like giving free money and the value of which is not decide yet. Many fo them might just claim that their token value will be this and that but let me tell you that in the long run the value never stays as it is and most of the time it is less than what is speculated during the bounty programs. So you see they are actually in profits all the time.

Also these teams will always have XYZ budget before they could start any ICO program. They will always allocate the funds for the ICO advertising and bounty programs so they are always in profits I would say.