"We still believe in TV, but we believe in an audience that is going to stay," Boff told me recently. She's looking for "engagement."

Boff will be on a panel I am hosting about native advertising at Business Insider's IGNITION conference next week. Ahead of our panel we spoke on the phone.

Boff says the thing she's looking for in her advertising right now is "impact." This explains some of GE's high-profile marketing initiatives of late. GE sponsored The New York Times' Virtual Reality foray, which sent a cardboard virtual reality headset to 1 million people. And last month GE invested in its second Snapchat ad campaign, sponsoring a "Geofilter" that allowed travelers to send pictures to their friends that included a graphic overlay about which airports they were in and where they were jetting off to.

While traditional TV may not be as sexy as a virtual reality headset or a Snapchat filter, it still delivers a big impact. In September, GE launched a TV ad campaign that promoted the company as a good place for software engineers to get jobs. She said those ads have led to a 200% increase in traffic to GE's jobs site.