Keywords vs search terms: what is the difference?
You bid on one. The customer types the other.
A keyword is what you choose to bid on, together with a match type: exact for that phrase alone, phrase for searches containing it, broad for loose relations. A search term is what the shopper actually typed when your ad appeared. Bid on the keyword eye drops on broad match and your ad may show for the search term dry eye drops for contact lens wearers.
The search term report is therefore the most honest document in Amazon advertising: it is customer language, spelled the way customers spell it, revealing demand you did not know existed.
The working loop never changes: mine search terms, promote the profitable ones to exact-match keywords with their own bids, and add the irrelevant ones as negatives so they stop costing money. Negatives are as important as bids.
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Compounding demand and rank, one concept at a time.
Reading about it is the slow way.
Talk to the team that runs this every day for healthcare brands.