It is undeniably one of the most crucial parts of a Digital Marketing team and the half-brother of Search Engine Optimization. 

Why Half?

Well, Paid Media Specialists focus on optimizing the paid search and all the display or social ads of a Digital Marketing Campaign, while the SEO's focus is more of the "Organic" approach side of things.

Other terms for Paid Media Specialist:

SEM - Search Engine Marketer

Paid Search Manager

But for the love of God don't use PMS as a short name for this one. ;) 

Venturing out in the wild forest of the World Wide Web without a map is a recipe for disaster, that's why the role of the specialist is to create a map for your Ads Journey.

They do this by:

Competitor Research - the things that work for them will work for your business too! ;)

Setting Goals - a plan that does not have a SMART target is like running a marathon with a blindfold, have a target which you can track and measure

Knowing your Customers - You know the predators in the forest of WWW, you have the map, now its time to study your businesses prey

Now that your Paid Media Specialist determined the predators, prey and created the map for your success, now it's time to get dirty!

How you measure paid media depends on your goals and the platforms that you use to advertise.

How do they do this?

Create and Setup Paid Media Campaigns - This is both art and science, one must know the tendencies of humans to click on an Ad. (Very Critical)

Budget - Ads on digital space eat a lot of cash, you've been warned!

Optimize - What works and what does not work must not co-exist, adapt or die.

As Peter Drucker said, "If we can't measure it, we can't improve it", technology nowadays can give us tons of data on our ad campaigns, it's up to us on how to use it.

Information that is important for Paid Media Specialists are:

1. ROAS - Return on Ad Spend
2. CPA - Cost per Acquisition 
3. ROI - Return on Investment
4. Website Traffic
5. Click Performance

Having this information is vital for your business, but understanding it will put your enterprise to a whole new level.