What will French VOD site Dailymotion use its recent €17 million ($25.5 million; £15.53 million) VC funding round for? To fund an ambitious plan to break the American market, increase audience across Europe and get its content on IPTV and mobile platforms. CEO Cédric Tournay told me in an interview: “The main objective of the company now with this new fundraising is to accelerate the international development… the US is the most important advertising market in the world so we have to focus on that.”

The site has 60 million unique users, is translated into 20 languages and is the leader in its domestic market. But Tournay admits the company can’t just be successful in “one domestic market—we need to be global”. And he hopes US success could translate into carriage deals and greater success in key markets such as the UK.

—American dream: According to Comscore (NSDQ: SCOR) Dailymotion has about 10 million monthly users Stateside, but for Tournay that’s not nearly enough. “For our US strategy, we need to invest in the technology, the platform, the staff and the content acquisitions,” he says. So having led cost cuts across the company of about 10 percent since joining in July, Tournay now wants to hire five or six US based staff at first—more may be added later—to add to its 15-strong New York-based team.

— IPTV: The site is already available on some web TV platforms and, in France, via digital terrestrial TV and ISPs. But Tournay has now set his sights on 30 percent of all DM views coming from TV in the next two to three years. “It’s a tremendous change for our business,” says Tournay. “We’re seeing an increasing audience through TV, it’s a more simple experience, it’s more intuitive, its fast and people like it.”  Without naming anyone, Tournay confirms negotiations are on-going with IPTV providers in the US and Europe.

—iPhone app: The company will launch two iPhone apps within the next two weeks: one will be free and ad-supported while the other is available for a one-time fee, will have no ads and gives users “premimum services”. No word on the price—talks are on-going with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) on that front. “This is a good market. Mobile advertising is moving very fast, so we hope this will be a profitable activity for us.”

—London calling: Tournay admits that the company is “too weak, too small” in the UK and he would like to bolster the company’s London operation with more staff and resources—and hopefully one or more IPTV carriage deals. But he says the key to cracking the “very tough” UK market is to find one large distribution partner and be successful in America first: “We tend to believe that to be strong in the UK you need to be strong in the US—you need a very, very strong English language catalogue and a global brand.” UK country manager Digby Lewis left the company this month—no word so far on his replacement.

—Business model defence: But can any of this actually work? Just months ago the business was scaling back because of high costs. “Our conviction is that we have shown that our business model is a good one, contrary to what people have thought,” says Tournay. “People believe that because of our distribution costs,  bandwidth costs and storage and so on, it would be impossible to break even—but that’s not right, our costs are decreasing quite fast.” The new money will support the international expansion, but Tournay stresses that as the business gets bigger, the costs of serving video “get cheaper and cheaper”.

• Corrected: Dailymotion Confirms €17 Million VC Round
• Industry Moves: Dailymotion Taps Cedric Tournay As New CEO
• Updated: Dailymotion Raises Another €15 Million As Costs Prove Challenging