In My opinion, they are killing the photography assignment business by offering assignment shooting on spec, just as they killed the stock business for individual creators. A friend and colleague of mine in Chicago was asked to bid on a job for a major fast food chain, and told that he must be budget friendly. He'd worked for the same division of the company, through the same large ad agency, same art director, same art buyer, several times. They loved his work for them. He bid it cheaper than he'd done things for in the past, and lost to Getty assignments as their cost was less than 1/4th what his was. The creative team was very unhappy that the client had chosen to go this way, and they were also very unhappy with the end result, but the client was thrilled with the $$. Getty also gave away more rights for less money. He then started asking around and found that this had been the case with many other shooters in Chicago as well as NYC and LA.
I would, under no circumstances, cast my lot with the robber barons of the photography industry just to make a few bucks. Might as well go work fast food.