Was the last ad break during the USA team entering? At least they've been ad free for a good 90 mins or so.
I suspect the intention always was the ceremonial part would be ad free, with as many ads as they could get away with (and more) during the athletes parade. I do think though it was unfortunate the main portion of the ceremony came after the very long athletes parade - the Olympics finally managed to cut theirs down to about 90 minutes this year, but the Paralympics clocked in at over two hours - and was quite a chore with the war torn and uninformed commentary (though the Canadian bloke was excellent when Krishnan let him speak).
I did think it was a dire ceremony though - more Royal Institution Christmas Lecture than a celebration of the world coming together in sport, and completely lacked the British touches that worked so well in the Olympic ceremonies.
I enjoyed the ceremony on the whole. The biggest problem was undoubtably the Parade taking far too long and right near the start of the ceremony. The viewing figures show that the public were willing to give the ceremony a go but after an hour and a half of the athletes parade they decided to switch over. I like how the ceremony used The Tempest motive in a much more powerful and coherent manner than the Olympic OC did. What's interesting is that a lot of overseas people that I've read online seem to prefer it to the Olympic OC mainly because it was a more traditional ceremony. Their main reasons for liking it seem to include the fact there was a lot of classical music used and the great arrangement of the National Anthem!