Hi @Ashton,
That’s a really good question, it’s not immediately obvious, and the name with some of our products can actually cause some confusion – it definitely fooled @Revels !!!
Paid Social is part of wider Performance Marketing, it’s a specific channel.
Broadly speaking, Performance Marketing is when you show ads online by paying for them – it’s basically like when you see a poster in the tube, but only this time you see it on the web. Usually, the mechanics means that you are bidding on a platform to have your ad shown to the relevant people in your target audience.
Performance Marketing consists of various “channels” or avenues you can advertise your company, and reach a different variety of people.
You have:
- Paid Social
- Paid Search
- Affiliate Marketing
- In some cases even PR can be considered Performance Marketing
- Display
- Audio and Podcasts
- SEO (although this is really to drive organic growth, you could evaluate performance through the same lens as the channels above)
Paid Social specifically is when you are bidding to show ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Quora, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, Linkedin etc.
“Social” refers to social channels like the ones above, and “Paid” means you are paying for the ads to be shown.
There’s a lot of data analysis, optimisation tactics and strategy involved, it’s very interesting and it allows you to work with creative and data at the same time! 
Hope that answers it!!!