(updates to correct Allaire’s role in Flash, thanks reader!)

 Jeremy Allaire’s first big hit, work at Macromedia helped make Flash the defacto standard among Web video producers. His syndication and destination site Brightcove now aims to do no less for online videos.

Big media companies Time Warner, Hearst Corp., IAC/InterActiveCorp and other investment partners are betting $59.5 million, in another round of financing, that Allaire’s got another hit on his hands.

Allaire chatted with Reuters by phone after the announcement and talked about expansion opportunities in Europe and Asia as priorities in 2007, and about how systems like Brightcove aim to level the playing field in media distribution.

Reuters: How do you expect to use the new cash infusion?
Allaire: “The financing will help us solidify the leadership position we have in the US market with the service and emerging consumer product. A significant amount of investment will go to developing those initiatives.

We spent quite a bit of time in other geographies looking for opportunities. We have some early traction in Europe. Some of the largest broadcasters like BSkyB and other major brands are distributing channels with us. And even in other geographies like India, where the largest Bollywood studio Rajshri (Productions, India’s largest entertainment conglomerate) is distributing content (with us). What we found is that in Europe and Asia, the core intrinsic characteristics of the markets, which is high levels of broadband penetration, significant-sized online advertising markets that are also growing, and the broader availability and usage of videos in those markets are contributing to this.”

Reuters: Which particular countries are prime targets for expansion?
Allaire: The primary focus for investment this year is the UK, Japan and China.

Reuters: The China market presents a unique regulatory challenge, no?
Allaire: It’s too early to tell. We’re not operating there at all today. The time we’re spending there suggests there’s a real demand for what we’re doing, even from government-owned or substantially government-owned media businesses that are trying to expand what they do online. It’s still very early … We’re not committing to specific dates and timeframes for business in these geographies, but we do see that (China) as a high priority market … Japan is the first and most direct that we’ll be introducing Brightcove in.
(He points out that Transcosmos, one of its new investors, owns significant interests in Japan-based digital media companies that could make good strategic partners. They include J-Stream, which he says is the Akamai of Japan, DoubleClick Japan, and NetRatings Japan. Transcosmos also has investments in Listen.com and CinemaNow in Japan.)

Reuters: There’s growing interest in the technology and media industries to tap into the online video viewing market by connecting PCs to TVs. Can you give us an update on the relationship with TiVo? 
Allaire: We introduced a beta of that early (last) year. Very recently we started to increase the number of channels that we’re starting to distribute over TiVo’s direct-to-TiVo download model. Reuters is in fact a brand that’s either live or going live. We have a number of channels that are in that. But we still have not made that generally available. Any publisher that works with us just can’t flip a switch and do it. They still have to work with us to activate that and we work with TiVo to ensure its content they want to have.

Reuters: What are the economics behind those types of deals?
Allaire: It’s a free offer to consumers. There is an opportunity to introduce advertising into that content. The consumers are not paying anything. It’s free to the publishers. There are advertising opportunities in the channels.

Reuters: So the ad revenue is split among the parties?
Allaire: If it’s a partner of ours, such as a big media company that sells their own advertising, they can sell that and keep that entirely themselves. We’re simply insuring that it’s a good outlet for them. If the channel is part of the Brightcove network and we’re selling the advertising into it, then we would share revenue. Right now, we’re not focused on that in the TiVo distribution. We’re focused on getting consumers acclimated as opposed to being focused on monetization.

Reuters: Are there other types of deals along those lines (PC-to-TV) that you foresee?
Allaire: Yeah, we have a commitment to that this year. I can’t announce anything (yet) … But it’s an area you’ll see us do more work in. The work at CES from a number of companies, Microsoft, Sony or Apple has (presented) more attractive products to facilitate this than we’ve seen in the past. It’s still not clear to me that it will be a significant behavior this year.

Reuters: There’s a lot of talk about how PC-to-TV connectivity is a way for content owners to bypass traditional content distributors. Your thoughts?
Allaire: I agree with that, very much so. The original vision of our company was in fact premised on that — that content owners would be able to distribute in a geography independent manner. So they can distribute to any place in the world. And in a device independent manner such that they can offer that programming to the consumer on a PC, on a portable device on a television set completely independent of carriers and operators. I think that’s playing out.

What we really need to see is, from the portable device side, whether it’s Apple’s new iPhone or the emerging growth in smartphones and then on the TV side, these various bridge adapters or direct-to-TV mechanisms, we need to see consumers demand and adopt those. It’s reasonable to assume that many TVs, DVD players and game consoles will all come equipped with this. It does seem like the overall footprint of consumers with this capability will be very significant over the next couple of years and will present a meaningful alternative distribution path.

(Photos: Brightcove.com )