AudienceScience, a behavioral ad targeting tech company, plans to announce Wednesday it has acquired Consorte Media, a digital marketing company that connects advertisers with Hispanics online, a company spokesperson says. AudienceScience will integrate Consorte Media's Hispanic domain expertise with the company's technology to provide audience targeting to marketers reaching out to the growing Hispanic audience in the United States.

Last month, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser market share has dipped below 60% -- a historic all-time-low -- according the new data from NetApplications. Showing a steep decline, IE had a intimidating 80% market share less than two years ago. Since then, the continued growth of alternative browsers from Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome has put IE on the defensive. According to NetApplications statistics, Mozilla’s Firefox browser now has nearly 25% market share, a position that is has held for the last two months. As such, Firefox still represents the largest threat to Internet Explorer’s dominance. Meanwhile, Google’s Chrome no commands …

Social network platform provider Ning has signed a letter of intent with a major educational publisher to keep its service free for educators, The New York Times’ Bits blog reports. Last month, the once high-flying Ning announced plans to nix its free product, and, in turn, force “existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere.â€� To boot, Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal -- who recently replaced the charismatic Gina Bianchini -- said the company had to cut nearly 70 employees, or more than 40% of its staff. According to Bits, the loss …

Google will reportedly begin selling digital books by late June or July of this year, a company representative tells The Wall Street Journal. In other words, life just got more complicated for Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble. Dubbed Google Editions, the new service will allow users to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book-search service, while it will allow book retailers -- including independent shops -- to sell Google Editions on their own sites, taking the bulk of the revenue. Chris Palma, Google’s manager for strategic-partner development, just announced the timetable at a panel on …

The food delivery service named Corscadden CMO, responsible for raising the company's profile and recruiting talent to HQ in Minnesota. He was CMO at Tyson Foods, Inc., which the press release calls "the world's largest protein company," where he managed more than 50 brands and directed all advertising and communications.--Nina Lentini

The Associated Press is reporting that the packaged goods giant is sending 1,000 bottles of Dawn dishwashing liquid to the Gulf of Mexico region to help clean wildlife affected by the oil spill.