I am relatively new to this space, but I have done some research and I think one way of approaching it is to decide on sectors that are promising first and then weed out the 99% useless projects which are often the once with the most aggressive marketing and ridiculous bounty strategies.
Then the whitepaper needs thorough reading, and the team needs to be top notch - not only from the blockchain side, but also from the "traditional" business side of the company sector, and then the structure of the actual ICO needs not to be detrimental to participation.