Still my favourite personal story from way back in 1997 just as video was beginning to make an appearance on the web.
We were doing a campaign site for IBM and their ad agency invited us over to discuss the concept. Bear in mind this was supposedly their interactive arm of the agency and like so many others had added 'interactive' to the their name but not to their skills!
Anyway during the meeting they discussed with the designer and the technician the possibilities of a video teaser.
Designer: yeah we can do it. 10 - 30 seconds tops.
Ad Agency: Well we thought more like 5 minutes. And can we have it full screen we hate having to squint at those little windows.
Tech: No way
Ad Agency: well it's a bit late now - we've already shot the video.
Tech: Look no-one does 5 mins of streaming video as a teaser! They'll need a plug-in as well.That'll take time to download and 5 minutes of video will be massive! You just can't have it full scree...
Ad Agency: A plug in?
Designer: (groan)
Ad Agency: well look you guys sort it out will you - you're the experts. We've spent 50 grand on the video already. Do you want us to tell IBM we've burnt half the budget and we need to start again - you must be kidding!
etc etc
In the end we found a streaming video app that was OK by going to a few porn sites and seeing what they used - we must have been the first non-porn use of Vivo-Active! (I believe they were later absorbed into the Real Media empire). Needless to say the campaign didn't do too well...after 25 minutes of downloading the plug-in the last thing you'd want to do was watch what turned out to be a really dull ad movie!