Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
gruseom · 2012-01-25 · Original thread
Claude Hopkins was doing A/B testing as early as 1910. He had people send out different versions of direct-mail ads, which they would correlate with sales.

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific-Classics-L...

I recommend this book. Apart from this and other techniques that he pioneered astonishingly early (we know that's true because the book came out in 1923), it's striking how many brands Hopkins created that are still household words today (Goodyear, Palmolive, Quaker). The book is also a plain good read.

gruseom · 2008-12-28 · Original thread
I got a lot out of Claude Hopkins' writings. He was one of the earliest pioneers of modern ads (turn of the 20th century), but when you read about how he meticulously tested his campaigns, it's as if he had the internet in mind. It's not the contemporary textbook you're asking for, but sometimes I think the classics have more valuable information in them. His stuff is also highly readable because it's full of good stories.

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific-Classics-L...

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