Nearly six in ten companies that help build and run Amazon Web Services' data centers in Aragón, in northeastern Spain, have added staff since they started that work, against 41% of local companies with no link to AWS. That is the headline finding of a survey carried out by GfK and commissioned by AWS, which Amazon published on October 27, 2026, under the title "How Amazon data centers in Spain are helping businesses create jobs and opportunities."

The study is small. It rests on interviews with 59 active AWS suppliers and a comparison group of 97 Aragonese companies, conducted by telephone and online between June and July 2026, according to the results report linked from Amazon's post. Most of its findings are the companies' own accounts of revenue, profit and headcount. Several of the comparisons set the suppliers' experience since they began working with AWS against the non-suppliers' experience over the past five years, and one figure that would narrow the revenue gap considerably appears in the report but not in Amazon's post.

In Short

Amazon paid a research firm to ask 59 companies that work on its Spanish data centers how business has gone, and compared their answers with 97 local firms that do not work with Amazon. The suppliers said they hired, grew and branched out more often than the other firms, although the two groups are not made up of the same kinds of businesses and the numbers are the companies' own estimates. The study shows that AWS work matters to a small group of Aragón businesses, but it does not measure how much of their growth Amazon actually caused.

What GfK measured, and how

The report is titled "AWS Economic Impact in Aragon: Results Report" and carries no publication date. Its methodology page names the research firm as GfK Emer Ad Hoc Research; Amazon's post describes the author as "GfK, part of NielsenIQ." Interviews combined telephone (CATI) and online (CAWI) methods.

The two samples were built differently. The 59 suppliers came from a database of AWS providers, according to the report, while the 97 comparison companies were drawn as a random sample of Aragonese companies not directly linked to AWS. The report does not say how many companies the AWS supplier database holds, so it is not possible to tell whether 59 represents most of the supplier base or a small fraction of it.

Sector mix is where the two groups part most clearly. Amazon's post describes the comparison group as "a random sample of local companies in the same sectors." The report's own breakdown tells a different story. Construction accounts for 40.7% of the supplier sample, manufacturing for 23.7%, other services for 16.9% and professional, scientific and technical activities for 5.1%, with smaller shares in retail, administrative activities, and information and communications. The comparison group is 84.5% construction and 15.5% electric power companies. Manufacturing, nearly a quarter of the suppliers, does not appear in the comparison group's breakdown at all.

About 49% of the suppliers have worked with AWS for between two and five years, according to the report. AWS-related activity accounts, on average, for 12% of these companies' current revenue, with a range running from 1% to 66%. On average, in other words, AWS is one significant customer among several rather than the core of the business.

Revenue: 60% against 56%

Amazon's post leads its financial findings with revenue. "More than half (60%) of suppliers have increased their revenue since they began working with AWS, with an average increase of 35% among those reporting a positive impact, 9 points above non-suppliers (26%)," the post states.

The report fills in what the post leaves out. Among non-supplier companies, 56% increased their revenue over the past five years, according to the report, 34% held steady and 10% recorded a decline. On the share of companies growing revenue, the gap between suppliers and non-suppliers is therefore 4 percentage points, measured over periods that do not match. The 9-point gap Amazon cites compares something else: the average increase among suppliers that reported a positive impact (35%) with an average increase of 26% for the non-supplier group over five years.

Profit shows a wider spread. According to the report, 53% of active suppliers reported higher net profit, against 33% of non-suppliers. The average net profit increase attributable to AWS reached 35% among suppliers able to determine it, compared with a 32% average increase for non-suppliers over five years. The companies reporting improved profitability are mainly larger firms and those with longer relationships with AWS, according to the report.

There is an inconsistency in the document. Its conclusions put the difference in the share of companies that increased net profit at nearly 10 percentage points. Its own figures, 53% and 33%, put the difference at 20 points.

Employment: 35 companies

Employment is the finding Amazon chose for the headline of its post, and the report backs it with company counts. According to the report, 59% of suppliers, or 35 companies, increased their workforce. Another 36%, or 21 companies, kept headcount unchanged, and 5%, three companies, reduced it. Among the non-suppliers, 41% increased their number of employees.

"Nearly 60% of AWS suppliers in Spain have increased their workforce, versus 41% of non-suppliers," the post states. "On average, roughly 1 in 5 of their employees work on AWS-related projects." The report gives that figure as a weighted average of 21%.

What the study does not provide is any count of jobs. It reports how many companies added staff, not how many people they hired, how many of those hires work on AWS projects, or what share would have been hired anyway. The only absolute headcounts come from the three companies quoted in the post, whose case studies are described further below.

New business lines and other AWS Regions

Diversification is the third leg of the study. According to the report, 22% of suppliers opened at least one new line of business, against 9% of companies that have never worked with AWS.

Geographic reach differs sharply between the two groups. Nearly three in four suppliers (73%) operate outside Aragón, compared with 34% of non-suppliers, and 41% of suppliers operate outside Spain, compared with 6%. The report then asks how much of that reach AWS produced. Among suppliers operating outside Aragón, 12% attribute their expansion into new Spanish autonomous communities to AWS. Among those operating outside Spain, 21% say they launched operations in new countries thanks to their work with AWS. Amazon's post presents the second figure as "Among suppliers operating internationally, 21% credit AWS with enabling that expansion." By PPC Land's calculation, 41% of 59 is about 24 companies, and 21% of those is about five.

The post also states that "more than 12% of local suppliers have already expanded" or are expanding their work to other AWS Regions worldwide. The report's breakdown adds up to exactly 12%: 2% are starting work for another AWS Region, 7% operate in one additional Region and 3% operate in two or more. More than half (54%) have not explored the possibility, and 34% say they are interested in doing so. Of the suppliers active in other Regions, 86% work only within Europe and 14% outside it. By PPC Land's calculation, 12% of the sample corresponds to about seven companies.

"Working with AWS has been an opportunity for us to grow, create jobs, and develop a new specialization in data centers. The value of this growth lies in the talent and knowledge that stay here and strengthen the competitiveness of Aragón's business fabric," said José María Alzaga, general manager of Gotor Comunicaciones, a telecommunications consulting and engineering company, according to Amazon's post.

Expectations and sentiment

Forward-looking questions produced the largest gaps in the study. According to the report, 75% of suppliers expect their company to grow over the next two or three years, against 30% of non-suppliers. Most non-suppliers (56%) expect stability, and 8% expect decline or operational difficulty, a category in which no supplier placed itself.

Twenty-seven percent of suppliers said they have greater financial and operational stability since they began working with AWS. About three in ten reported more autonomy in business decisions, which Amazon's post renders as "greater confidence and flexibility," while 2% said their ability to choose had decreased.

Asked to rate the overall effect of working with AWS, 85% of suppliers called it positive or very positive: 36% very positive and 49% positive. The remaining 15% were neutral, and no supplier rated it negatively. Nearly two-thirds (64%) said they will keep working with AWS over the next few years. Another 34% said continuity does not depend solely on their decision, a response consistent with project-based construction and engineering work.

Three companies, three provinces

The three suppliers quoted in the post come from Aragón's three provinces, according to the report's case studies: Teruel, Huesca and Zaragoza, the same three where Amazon plans new facilities under its Spanish investment program.

Gilva, a family-owned precast concrete manufacturer from Teruel, has worked on the construction of AWS data centers since 2023, according to the report. Its overall revenue rose 23%, and its workforce grew from 101 to 115 employees. The company is also developing a cable-ducting product for data centers. "In just three years, our revenue tied to AWS-related projects has grown more than sixfold, and we've increased our workforce by around 15%. For a family business from Teruel like ours, it is a point of pride and a great opportunity to grow alongside an international company that is betting on the Aragón region," said Jaime Valimañas, chief executive of Gilva. The headcount figures in the report work out to a 13.9% increase, by PPC Land's calculation.

Giral Excavaciones y Obras, from Huesca, has more than 50 years of history and has worked with AWS on data center construction since 2021. "Thanks to the projects related to the construction of AWS's data centers in Aragón, we've increased our revenue by nearly 22% and expanded our workforce by 25%, going from 24 to 30 employees. These figures are a sign of the positive impact AWS's presence has in our region," said Javier Giral, its chief executive. The report places that revenue growth over five years.

Gotor Comunicaciones, founded in Zaragoza in 1989, began developing telecommunications solutions for AWS data centers in 2022. The report attributes a 10% to 15% revenue increase to that work and records 20% workforce growth on the related projects, along with a new data center business line.

In the two cases with headcounts, Giral added six employees and Gilva added 14, which puts the job gains at individual suppliers in single or low double digits.

The €31.7bn and 29,900 figures are not from the survey

Amazon's post places the study alongside its investment numbers. "Amazon plans to invest €33.7 billion ($37.5 billion) in Spain through 2035 to expand and support this infrastructure in Spain," it states, adding that the total "is estimated to contribute €31.7 billion to Spain's GDP through 2035, supporting the equivalent of 29,900 full-time jobs on average per year at local companies, including direct, indirect, and induced jobs."

Those figures predate the GfK fieldwork. Amazon raised its planned Spanish investment to €33.7 billion on March 2, 2026, adding €18 billion to the €15.7 billion plan announced in 2024, with the same GDP and job estimates. At that point Amazon said 6,700 of the 29,900 full-time equivalent jobs would be directly attributable to its investment, and that Aragón would receive €18.5 billion of the GDP contribution and 13,400 full-time equivalent jobs a year, including 4,200 direct jobs. The GfK report itself contains no GDP estimate and no projection of jobs; it measures what 59 suppliers say has happened to them. The dollar conversion has also moved: the March figure was given as $39.8 billion, the October post gives $37.5 billion.

The distinction matters because induced jobs, the ones supported when workers spend their wages and governments spend tax receipts, are modeled rather than counted. When JCDecaux published a commissioned study counting 183,460 jobs worldwide in October 2026, only 11,894 of them were the company's own staff, and induced effects made up 54% of the total. Amazon's Spanish projection does not publish its breakdown between indirect and induced employment beyond the 6,700 direct figure.

How a supplier survey differs from a measurement

The report contains no section on limitations, and several follow from its design. The suppliers were selected from a list held by the company that commissioned the study. Revenue, profit and employment changes are self-reported, and the share of growth attributed to AWS is the respondents' own judgment. The comparison group differs in sector mix and is asked about a different time window. Subgroup figures, such as the 21% of internationally active suppliers who credit AWS for new markets, rest on a handful of companies.

None of this means the findings are wrong. Construction and engineering firms working on a multibillion-euro build-out would be expected to report growth, and the direction of the results is consistent across every question. What the design cannot do is isolate how much of that growth came from AWS rather than from the companies' size, sector or the wider regional economy.

Marketers will recognize the problem. Measuring incrementality, the share of outcomes an intervention actually caused, requires an estimate of what would have happened without it. A holdout study gets there by keeping a randomly chosen group unexposed and comparing results. The Aragón study has a comparison group, but not a random split: one group was picked because it already works with AWS, the other because it does not.

Officials and Amazon framed the results as evidence of local spillover. "The real value of an investment like AWS's lies in how it spreads across our economy: in the small and medium-sized companies that are growing, hiring, and taking on new projects thanks to it," said Eva Valle, minister of economy, competitiveness, and employment of the Government of Aragón.

"When we invest in infrastructure in Aragón, the benefit does not stay within our data centers: it multiplies across the region's business fabric. In Aragón, most of our suppliers have found new business opportunities, grown their revenue and profit, and created new jobs. Our commitment is to remain an engine of opportunity for the local economy," said Suzana Curic, country leader of AWS for Spain and Portugal.

Why this matters for the marketing industry

The servers in Aragón are not an abstraction for advertising. In October 2025, AWS launched RTB Fabric, a managed network for real-time bidding traffic, in six AWS Regions, two of them in Europe, claiming single-digit millisecond latency and launch partners including Amazon Ads, GumGum, TripleLift and Viant. PPC Land described at the time how AWS has become central infrastructure for advertising beyond Amazon's own business.

The scale of the spending behind it keeps rising. In its second-quarter results, Amazon reported AWS revenue of $42.2 billion, up 36.7%, and raised its 2026 capital expenditure plan to about $220 billion, mostly for AWS and generative AI. A large part of that demand comes from AI developers: Anthropic's IPO filing showed a commitment of at least $110 billion to Amazon for compute from May 2026 to April 2036. Amazon ties the Spanish expansion to the same demand: a related announcement linked from the post describes the €33.7 billion plan as a way "to expand data center infrastructure and drive AI innovation across Europe." The Aragón suppliers are, in effect, building part of that hyperscaler capacity.

The market those data centers serve in Spain is concentrated. Spain's competition authority found that only 2.3% of sampled Spanish cloud customers switched their main provider between 2022 and 2024, with AWS and Microsoft each holding between 20% and 30% of combined infrastructure and platform revenue in 2024. The EU Data Act bars egress fees for switching providers from January 12, 2027.

The Aragón study is the second time in October that Amazon has paired a European investment message with claims of local economic benefit. A week earlier, the company said it would invest more than €16 billion in Germany in 2027, of which only €4.8 billion was allocated, to the AWS Frankfurt Region, while referring to a commissioned Oxford Economics projection whose figures were not published. The October post also promotes Amazon's June claim that its data centers are seven times more water-efficient than the industry average, a ratio of 0.12 liters per kWh against 0.84 that comes without site-level consumption data.

Such studies arrive as data center growth in Europe runs into physical limits. Grid capacity is already tight in parts of the continent: more than 11,900 businesses in the Netherlands were waiting for grid connections in 2025, and Ireland paused new data center connections in Dublin until 2030. A survey of 59 suppliers answers part of one question raised by the Aragón build-out: whether the money reaches local businesses. It does not show how much of their growth that money caused.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Web Services, which commissioned the study; GfK, which conducted it; 59 AWS suppliers and 97 non-supplier companies in Aragón; the suppliers Gilva, Giral Excavaciones y Obras and Gotor Comunicaciones; Eva Valle of the Government of Aragón; and Suzana Curic, AWS country leader for Spain and Portugal.

What: A supplier survey finding that 59% of AWS suppliers in Aragón increased their workforce, against 41% of non-suppliers, along with gaps in revenue growth (60% against 56%), net profit (53% against 33%), new business lines (22% against 9%) and growth expectations (75% against 30%). The figures are self-reported, the two samples differ in sector mix and time frame, and the GDP and jobs projections in Amazon's post come from its March 2026 investment announcement, not from the survey.

When: Amazon published the results on October 27, 2026. Fieldwork took place in June and July 2026.

Where: Aragón, in northeastern Spain, where AWS has operated data centers since 2022 and plans facilities in Zaragoza, Huesca and Teruel under a €33.7 billion investment program running through 2035.

Why: Amazon is pairing large European infrastructure commitments with evidence of local economic benefit as data center growth draws scrutiny over grids, water and market concentration. For the advertising industry, the facilities underpin cloud services that host ad tech workloads, including real-time bidding.