In running client campaigns, we often come up against media owners that have a clear idea of the value of their inventory often without too much regard to what their services return to their advertisers. Achieving ROI on advertising is a constant battle, and it's getting harder.

So what do you do?

When you think about how to tell the world about what you offer, it can be tough to decide where to advertise. How do you know what each channel will return? Are you looking at a serious opportunity or a media owner with bogus traffic, imaginary readers and not-so-opt-in members?

In our key area of activity, online finance, we face a shortage of good value advertising opportunities. There are the tried and tested channels, most of which are struggling to generate the results they used to. This can be due to the following, among a number of other factors:

• Too many competing messages
• Media burn-out through over use
• Caution of the target client base because of scam operators

Navigating through the vast array of opportunities, there's usually a period of time where you have to accept some experimentation.

Using a specialist agency can help you short cut the testing by using their experience and by giving you a reality check on media costs.

One approach is running limited test campaigns with a few media channels, keeping the majority of your adspend to channels you know are reputable. In a way, it's like investment risk capital; if you're running a limited budget and you've not tried too many media channels in your target market, gamble only with what you can comfortably lose or what you could accept being a total failure in the worst case.

Whenever you can, try to get performance-based incentives into your advertising deals. You might want to book up a three month campaign, based on performance meeting a certain target in the first month. This approach can result in a discount and an opt-out if it doesn't work out for you. And if the media owner is genuine, it will do everything it can to preserve the longer-term deal and ensure you come back for more.

Test marketing can take a varying amount of your budget, and you can often find the golden opportunities by being more adventurous. Think of new channels, new messages and what makes your offer unique and special.

To achieve advertising ROI, invest in your brand, prioritise face time with your audience - there's no substitute for it - be adventurous and do everything you can to bring out in your campaigns the magic of what you do.