In a move to place greater emphasis on its technology initiatives, online advertising company DoubleClick Inc. is hiring a chief information officer and appointing a new president and chief financial officer.

For the first time in its nearly six-year history, DoubleClick has created an executive-level CIO position. Mok Choe, former co-CIO at online brokerage firm Ameritrade Inc., will assume the new role at DoubleClick. Choe says he will be charged with making the company's technology operations run more efficiently and with improving collaborative efforts between DoubleClick's business and technology operations. After two weeks on the job, 43-year-old Choe says he's glad he made the switch to DoubleClick. "The business model was narrow and deep at Ameritrade," he says, adding that online trading didn't challenge him as much as he anticipates online marketing will. "This digital marketing thing is new," he says. "DoubleClick is constantly looking for opportunities to make digital marketing better."

In addition to hiring a CIO, DoubleClick also appointed David Rosenblatt to the role of president. Rosenblatt formerly served as president of the company's data, research, and technology divisions. Rosenblatt fills the position that had been vacant since July 2000 when Kevin Ryan was promoted to CEO. And acting CFO Bruce Dalziel has been named CFO.

Adding new executive positions strengthens DoubleClick's hand in tough times, says Gomez adviser Alan Alper. "DoubleClick needs to provide a metric that shows how effective Internet ads are," he says. Alper suggests DoubleClick now has the resources to create a technology that can help it justify its existence and service offerings to advertisers.