In true journalistic fashion, several anonymous sources materialized to tell Bloomberg about Groupon’s private search for new funding—to the tune of a $3 billion valuation. Looking at how well saturated the web seems to be with the company’s advertisements (I happen to live in a city which they cover) it looks like they might actually be able to use those sorts of funds.

From the article on the subject,

The company aims to raise the funding to help it expand beyond the 230 markets where it now operates, said the people, who declined to be identified because the fundraising is private. The company had been discussing funding that would value it in the range of $2 billion to $3 billion, two of the people said.

Groupon, which plans to serve 300 cities by year’s end, sends daily coupons for one-time sales to a widening list of users. It could use funding to add sales staff who are needed to sign up local businesses, including nail salons, restaurants and coffee shops. An investment group led by Mail.ru Group Ltd. in April gave Groupon a valuation of about $1.3 billion.

This is coming on the heels of Groupon partnering with eBay to provide highly local coupons. They look like the little social marketing company that could as they press further into their given market. The funding search may be stimulated by the rest of the industry taking notice of how popular localized group coupon marketing is and numerous sites are starting to offer their own similar services.

In order to press their advantage, Groupon will need to push into more cities and to do that they’ll need the funds. Looking at their current valuation of 1.3 billion, it seems to me that it may not be too hard for them to find investors ready to climb on board. Generally, when someone has such a good thing going that rival services are trying to take a piece of the pie, it shows that they’ve gotten something right.

That said, the article also includes other reasons why Groupon should be the darling child of the coupon social-marketing industry: they’re actually offering logistics consulting services to aid businesses who get swamped with customers when they sign on. Any marketing paradigm that delivers customers in the droves for little money and energy is going to be a sure hit.