Scientific Advertising

The book is cited as being the original description of the process of split testing and of coupon-based customer tracking and loyalty schemes.

In the book, Hopkins outlines an advertising approach based on testing and measuring. In this way losses from unsuccessful ads are kept to a safe level while gains from profitable ads are multiplied. Or, as Hopkins wrote, the advertiser is "playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot".

The book is widely considered the foundation of direct marketing.^{[citation needed]}

According to Paul Feldwick, it has sold over eight million copies.^[1] David Ogilvy wrote that "Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times. It changed the course of my life."^[2]

In the TV-series Mad Men, season 1 episode 11, copywriter Peggy Olson reads Scientific Advertising to prepare herself for work.