Why is this downvoted? The very definition of a capital cost is a one-time (or mostly one-time) expense.
Regardless of whether you expect marketing costs to fall in the future, they are still operating expenses. After all, Groupon can't operate without this expense.
If marketing is a capital cost, then everything is, and therefor capital cost becomes a rather useless classification.
Let me put it this way: What is an operating expense for Groupon?
Dishonest companies use shady accounting practices. No successful or confident company needs to.
It's like if McDonald's used CSOI to classify their employees as capital costs... since you know eventually they'll be replaced by robots anyway.