Bounty Programs are a new way for marketing.
They may evolve but they won't die.
New way for marketing?
No mate.. we did a lot of 4-5 years ago

I remember when Bitcointalk.org admin banned bounty campaigns (because of the campaigns everyone make spam comments) from "altcoin discussion" and made new topics for this.. at this time we was online and made new site for coin developers to promote their bounty campaigns and we had daily 5-6k unique visitors for 2-3 weeks..
and still this is the best way to promote your project. Easy and cheap but you can reach lot of people.. good for everyone.
That teams who are did bounty campaigns usually don't have money for promoting but they have power and works like real team and sometimes in this ALTCOIN world this means more than some hundred - thousand dollars because if investors see the potential (work, trusted team,etc..) they will invest..