Groupon’s first-quarter profits will fail to meet analyst expectations, the ecommerce giant revealed this week. Among other issues, “two acquisitions last month will hurt profit by $20 million this quarter,” Bloomberg reports, citing company comments. “That impact, plus $25 million in additional expenses for marketing and growth initiatives, will lead to adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $20 million to $40 million.” Analysts had estimated $96 million, according to Bloomberg. 

Nearly 25 people from the agency and ad technology industries have joined together to form an initiative to combat impression fraud, AdNews has reported.

TechCrunch has reported that OpenX has announced the appointment of Tom Fuelling, ex-CFO of Hulu, as its own chief financial officer.

The Drum on Wednesday posted an article titled, "It's clear with RTB: display is no longer a gamble." The post calls real-time bidding (RTB) "the new darling of digital marketing" and focuses on transparency.

The Drum has reported that Adbrain has "launched a platform for programmatic mobile audience buying in private beta."

VentureBeat has reported that mobile marketing company TapSense saw a 300% jump in revenue in January compared to December. The company's CEO, Ash Kumar, told VentureBeat that the growth can be attributed "to a few well-timed product launches, including TapSense's introduction of a native ads marketplace in early January." The company also launched a private real-time bidding (RTB) marketplace last month.

Adweek on Tuesday posted a piece featuring TripleLift, a startup looking to combine programmatic and native. To achieve this goal, the company is reportedly rolling out a "native ad exchange."

The Wall Street Journal has reported that sell-side platform (SSP) PubMatic "has tapped bankers for a potential initial public offering," citing "people familiar with the matter."

Re/code has reported that sell-side platform (SSP) PubMatic has raised $13 million from Nokia Growth Partner. "NGP's John Gardner will join PubMatic's board as an observer," per Re/code.

Vivaki's Marco Bertozzi, executive managing director EMEA; Xaxis EMEA's Nicky McShane, VP of business development; and myHealthPal's Marry Keane Dawson, group CEO, offered The Drum their thoughts on mobile real-time bidding (RTB) in 2014.