Emotional advertisements are proving to be the most memorable during the Olympics, because viewers were already primed to get all teary-eyed thanks to NBC's endless "Michael Phelps is an American hero" storyline.

Coca-Cola found great success with its animated "Bird's Nest" ad, which showed birds creating a nest out of drinking straws; Oreo scored points with two girls (one American, one Chinese) eating cookies on different trains as they passed by each other; and General Electric, which owns NBC, got propped up by its ad featuring a dragon that heats a village pool with its fire-breathing snout, reminding viewers that we're entirely dependent on fantasy to wean us off oil.