This Sunday, 238 people gathered in auditoriums in McLean, Virginia, and Chicago, for all of $50 apiece, will be the most influential people in all of advertising.

In theory, all that they'll be doing is gorging on salty snacks and watching the Super Bowl, just like millions of other Americans. But they will also be rating commercials for USA Today's Ad Meter poll, and their opinions will have a surprisingly profound, sometimes disastrous effect on the advertising industry.

The fates of personal careers, national brands, and international advertising agencies hang in the balance.

Just ask the principals at Chicago's Cramer-Krasselt agency, which last year created several commercials for its $60 million dollar a year client, Careerbuilder.com.

After none of Careerbuilder's three spots failed to crack USA Today's Ad Meter Top 10 -- its best was ranked 16th -- the client put its account up for review, effectively ending its five-year relationship with Cramer-Krasselt.

 "To our amazement, to our total astonishment, all that astounding business success was less important than one poll," Cramer-Krasselt President Peter Krivkovich wrote in an internal memo that found its way to Adweek (subscription required).  "It's so ludicrous and they are so serious about that poll it's almost funny."

Understandably, Cramer-Krasselt's take on the Ad Meter is different from that of the folks at DDB Chicago, whose mega client Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light had seven of the Top 10 spots in the Ad Meter rankings last year.  

DDB Group Creative Director Mark Gross takes obvious pride while rolling off stats about his agency's success with the meter, and he admits that it takes a certain type of spot to crack the code: "Visually driven comedy, based upon a simple story line, with a surprise that leaves you smiling."

Jim Norman, USA Today's polling editor and the man who runs the Ad Meter, said the top-rated commercial ever was a 1995 Pepsi commercial that featured a boy trying so hard to get the last drop that he sucked himself right into the bottle. It scored 9.66 out of 10.

By comparison, last year's highest-rated commercial was Bud Light's "Crabs Worshipping Ice Chest" which scored 8.56; the lowest, at 4.05, was the lone ad for Salesgenie.com.

When trying to produce a winning spot, it helps to have a budget like the one at Anheuser-Busch, which sometimes shoots several dozen spots and thoroughly test each one.

Gross says DDB's testing process is, not coincidentally, a lot like the Ad Meter methodology. The commercials that work best in test are the ones most likely to make it on the air.

(Anheuser Busch says that this year's Clydesdale entry for its Budweiser brand scored higher in pre-testing than any previous commercial for the company.)

Ad agency executives are increasingly resigned to having to take such extraordinary measures in order to please the Ad Meter.

"Whether you're shooting for it or not, the Meter is a reality," says Jill Nykoliation, president of the Toronto ad boutique Juniper Park. For projects of this magnitude, she said, "there's nothing we'll do differently as far as tapping into the essence of the brand or the psyche of the public, but because it's a Super Bowl spot, we might ultimately choose to produce the spot different."

One might think that a polling device as important as the Ad Meter would be incredibly sophisticated and the methodology intricate and complex. But according to Norman, who's got a lot on his plate these days with the Super Bowl butting right up against Super Tuesday, the only difference between this year's Ad Meter and the first one 20 years ago is that this year's gadget is wireless.

"On a device a little bigger than an iPod, the audience rates a spot on a scale of 1 to 7," Norman explains, adding that the ratings are later pro-rated on a 1-to-10 scale.  "The score from each device reflects the highest point reached during a spot, usually the punch line of a joke. The final score for each spot reflects an average of the highest grades given by each individual."

The recruitment process is equally straightforward. Norman says that in an attempt to reflect the makeup of the 93 million plus watching the game, they recruit about three men for every two women, and make sure to include various ages, economic backgrounds and races.

None of the recruits, apparently, have anything better to do on the de facto national holiday that is Super Sunday.

Why test in McLean? Because USA Today has its offices there. Is the second location based upon a desire to reflect regional diversity? Not according to Norman. The choice of a second city reflects his desire to go to someplace affordable and convenient. Houston got the nod last year.

On the wall in Norman's office is a quote that appeared in Ad Age after the Super Bowl a few years ago:  "The Ad Meter is ... irrelevant at best and fascist at worst."

Does the veteran pollster agree?

"It is," he says, "what the numbers say it is."

I wonder what the principals at Portland's acclaimed Wieden + Kennedy agency think of all this hoopla over a simple poll.  If at the end of the day the people who brought us "Just do it" think that the opinions of 230-some people in a controlled environment really matter.  

I wonder because Wieden is doing the Careerbuilder ads for this year's game.