First Quarter:

Ads about as weak as the Patriots at the start of the game.

I have to recuse myself from cola and Pepsi products, since my son works there (though I did enjoy the Pepsi and Coke ads).

Top grades to Chevy truck. Decent job, I hate to say, by GoDaddy which actually had a message this year. Battleship ad and BestBuy also garnered attention for new news.

First ad out of the box for Hyundai was not worthy of the post position.

Second Quarter:

The second quarter was better for ads and Patriots. Hmmm...

Several strong ads with traditional SuperBowl production values to gain attention for effective messaging -- VW (though the coda probably cost more than it was worth and confused people who don't remember past ads), Chevy Sonic, GE/Bud (especially good for GE if Bud, which is having a terrible game, paid part of the freight), and H&M which remembered that a lot of women are watching.

Teleflora and Cars.com made less compelling or novel points, but were positive.

TaxAct stepped up to be classless, while ETrade, Bridgestone and Bud's prohibition spot all failed to get a motivational point across.

NBC has gotten new news out about their programs, using the time more smartly than Hulu which seems to have something new to announce as best I can tell.