To launch Google Ads in Indonesia, target the country or a smaller location, write ads, keywords and landing page in Indonesian, show your prices in rupiah and check your account's billing address: PT Google Indonesia invoices accounts with an Indonesian address. The sourced facts are in the facts table at the top of the page.
Key takeaway: Launch a separate campaign for Indonesia, written in Indonesian, with prices in rupiah and an account whose billing address matches your tax situation, read the Indonesian Google results page of each keyword before you bid, and check the rules for your sector before the first ad.
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official languages | Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia): Article 36 of the Constitution makes it the language of the State. Article 32 adds that the State respects and maintains regional languages as a national cultural treasure | Constitutional Court of Indonesia (Mahkamah Konstitusi), Constitution, English text (Articles 32 and 36) |
| Languages Google Ads supports | Indonesian (code id). Malay (ms), English (en), Chinese (simplified and traditional) and Arabic are also among the languages Google Ads supports; Javanese and Sundanese are not on the list | Google Ads API, language codes |
| Currency | Rupiah (IDR): Bank Indonesia requires the rupiah in every transaction made in Indonesian territory, and offers of goods and services, including online, must be quoted in rupiah only (no dual price display) | Bank Indonesia, information center “Bank Indonesia Bicara” (Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah) |
| Search engines (share of searches) | Google 92.26%, Bing 3.05%, DuckDuckGo 2.21%, Yahoo! 1.74% (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Mobile vs desktop | Desktop 55.83%, mobile 43.62%, tablet 0.55% of page views (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Google Ads billing entity | PT Google Indonesia, which invoices as a reseller of the services all Google Ads accounts with an Indonesia billing address | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| VAT on Google Ads | For accounts with an Indonesia billing address, all ad sales in Indonesia are subject to an 11% VAT (PPN), invoiced by PT Google Indonesia. A customer who wants to withhold 2% at source must send Google a withholding tax slip (Bukti Potong) within the invoice payment deadline, otherwise a balance stays outstanding. To receive a valid tax invoice (Faktur Pajak), an individual provides a NIK, an organization its 16-digit NPWP and a branch office its 22-digit NITKU. Google notes that it cannot advise on tax matters | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| Country VAT rate | The statutory rate rose to 12% (ministerial regulation PMK 131/2024, signed December 31, 2024), but it applies only to luxury goods and services. Everything else stays at an effective 11%: the tax base is cut to 11/12 of the price (“DPP nilai lain”) | Directorate General of Taxes of Indonesia (DJP), “Penyesuaian Tarif PPN” |
| Country-specific Google surcharge | No country-specific surcharge in Google's list: Indonesia is not on it | Google Ads Help, “Jurisdiction-specific surcharges” |
| Online and offline gambling | No online gambling is allowed: Indonesia is not on the list of countries where Google accepts these ads after certification. Promotion of offline gambling is also prohibited: Indonesia is named among the countries where advertising offline gambling is illegal | Google Advertising Policies, “Gambling and games” |
| Alcohol | Indonesia is not on the list of countries where alcohol ads can be targeted, and an ad that only targets locations outside the list is disapproved. Alcohol-free and low-ABV drinks (under 0.5%) can be advertised there, with a Google certification and within local restrictions | Google Advertising Policies, “Alcohol” |
| Political content | Ads featuring political candidates or parties for Indonesian elected offices are prohibited on Google platforms in Indonesia | Google Advertising Policies, “Political content” |
| Idul Fitri (Lebaran): public holidays and collective leave | The joint decree of the ministers of Religious Affairs, Manpower and Administrative Reform, signed on September 15, 2026, sets Idul Fitri 1448 H on March 10 and 11, 2027 (national holidays) and adds three days of collective leave, on March 9, 12 and 15, 2027. The exact date is set by a decision of the Minister of Religious Affairs. In the private sector, collective leave is decided by each company's management | State Secretariat of Indonesia (Setneg), joint decree of three ministers on public holidays and collective leave |
| Harbolnas (National Online Shopping Day) | The edition announced by the Minister of Trade at the official launch on August 27, 2026 runs from December 10 to 16, 2026. It aims to support fourth-quarter spending and this year extends to digital services such as accommodation and transport tickets | Ministry of Trade of Indonesia (Kemendag), “Kick-off Road to Harbolnas” |
Data verified on . Each value was read on its source on the date shown. It may have changed since: the source prevails.
One campaign per country and language keeps budgets, bids and reports readable. In the settings, pick Indonesia as the location. Google generally recommends Presence or interest for Search and keeps Presence for sensitive sectors and for offers that only concern people located on site: choose according to your offer.
Write ads, keywords and landing page in Indonesian: Google matches ads to searches based on their language. If you also want to speak English to part of your audience, create a separate campaign or ad group, with ads and keywords in English. The facts table at the top of the page lists the languages Google Ads recognizes.
Start from Keyword Planner set to Indonesia and Indonesian, not from a translation or a Malay list. Our guide on how to choose Google Ads keywords covers the method. Then note in the search terms report what internet users really type.
For each keyword, open the Google results page from Indonesia, in Indonesian, and look at the ads, the pages that rank and the local block. The Should I Bid intent analysis does this reading keyword by keyword and returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict.
Have the landing page written, or at least reviewed, by a native speaker of Indonesian, and show your prices in rupiah. Bank Indonesia asks for offers quoted in rupiah only: to know whether your case falls under the rule, consult a lawyer.
Check your account's billing address: PT Google Indonesia invoices accounts whose address is in Indonesia, with a local VAT and tax identifiers to provide. An account based elsewhere reads the section of its own country. Ask your accountant what is recoverable, then look in the Billing section for the payment methods offered to your account.
Several sectors have country-specific rules. Online gambling is not allowed, alcohol is outside the targetable countries and political ads are prohibited. Read the Google policy page for your sector before you write.
Run a capped test budget, read the search terms report and add as negatives the searches that bring clicks with no buying intent. Then compare your keywords in Google Trends set to Indonesia around Idul Fitri and Harbolnas before you adjust your budgets.
For Search, language is decided by your ads and your keywords: write them in Indonesian. Google removed the language setting from Search campaigns: ads are now matched based on their language, and Google gives priority to ads that match the language of the search term. To reach your audience, you keep the geographic location, meaning the country or a smaller area. One campaign, or at least one ad group, per language remains the most readable structure to follow budgets and results.
Indonesian is the language of the State, and the common language of the archipelago. The Constitution provides that the language of the State is Indonesian. According to Wikipedia, it is the language that links the regions of the archipelago and it is mainly used in commerce, administration, education and the media. The same article notes that most Indonesians also speak another language, such as Javanese, which they learned first.
Regional languages are protected by the Constitution, but Javanese and Sundanese are not on Google Ads' list. Another article says the State respects and maintains regional languages. The facts table at the top of the page gives the languages Google Ads recognizes: Indonesian is there with Malay, English and others, but not Javanese, the most spoken native language of the country according to Wikipedia, nor Sundanese, named among the next ones. So start from Indonesian for a first test, and read the search terms report to see what your visitors really type before you invest in another language.
Indonesian and Malay each have their own entry in Google's list: do not copy a keyword list from one into the other. Wikipedia describes Indonesian as a standardized form of Malay, but Google Ads gives them two different codes. The words, the phrasing and the brand names that internet users type do not necessarily overlap. Rebuild your list from Keyword Planner set to Indonesia and Indonesian, then open the Google results page from Indonesia to check that each search shows buying intent rather than articles or definitions.
Have the ads and the landing page written by a native speaker of Indonesian. A machine translation does not judge tone or level of language, and a native review keeps your brand and product names in the form your customers type. Our guide on how to choose Google Ads keywords covers the starting method. The list below sums up the points to check.
Google Ads lets you go below the country level, but the types of locations available change from one country to another. Google Ads Help on geographic targeting says so, and the list of locations published by Google shows, for Indonesia, provinces, cities, districts and postal codes, from Bali to West Java. That is useful for a business that only delivers to or serves part of the country.
A location that is too small may serve only from time to time, or not at all. The same help page warns that small locations do not always meet Google's targeting criteria, and that a radius under one kilometer is not allowed. So start with the country or a large area, then split once you have data to read.
Split according to your real coverage, not according to the map. If your deliveries, your teams or your licenses only cover certain islands or provinces, the campaign location must follow that coverage: otherwise you pay for clicks you cannot serve. Our guide to calculating wasted Google Ads budget helps put a number on that risk.
Check that the location you want exists in the tool before you build a plan by province. According to Wikipedia, the country has several recently created Papuan provinces, such as Central Papua or Highland Papua. A list of locations can lag behind a new administrative map. Look for the exact location in Google Ads, and if it is missing, see whether its cities or districts are listed.
According to the facts table at the top of the page, Google captures most searches in Indonesia, and other engines weigh little. A Google Ads campaign only reaches searches made on Google: it covers neither Bing, nor DuckDuckGo, nor Yahoo!. Given the gap in the table, the question of a second engine can wait for the first Google results.
These shares are an order of magnitude, not your audience. StatCounter explains that its tracking code is installed on more than a million sites, and that the share of engines rests on visits arriving from an engine to those sites, not on the number of searches. Your own Google Ads reports will tell what happens for your keywords.
The table shows a very present mobile, but a desktop that weighs more in page views. So do not build your landing pages for a single type of device: open them on both, testing speed and readability. After the first days, look at the device report of your account: the split of page views in a country says nothing about the split of your future customers, which depends on your offer.
The company that invoices you depends on your account's billing address, not on the country where you advertise. In Google's page on taxes by country, the Indonesia section says PT Google Indonesia issues invoices, as a reseller of the services, for accounts whose billing address is in Indonesia. For an account based elsewhere, the section of your own country is the one that applies to you.
For these accounts, Google applies a local VAT to all ad sales in Indonesia. The facts table gives the rate Google quotes. Mind the wording: the Indonesian tax authority publishes a higher statutory rate, reserved for luxury goods and services, and brings the others down to an effective rate equal to the one Google quotes, through a reduced tax base. The facts table shows both lines. Do not recalculate anything yourself: ask your accountant what is recoverable in your case.
A withholding tax and tax identifiers may come on top. According to Google's page, a customer who wants to withhold tax on its payment must send its withholding slip (Bukti Potong) within the payment deadline shown on the invoice, otherwise a balance stays outstanding. To receive a valid tax invoice (Faktur Pajak), you must also provide an identifier: the NIK for an individual, the NPWP for an organization, the NITKU for a branch office. The name and address of the account must match exactly those registered with the tax authority. Google reminds you that it does not give tax advice.
Google adds no regulatory surcharge specific to Indonesia. Google's list of jurisdiction-specific surcharges names several countries, and Indonesia is not one of them. So your test budget needs no local markup. Read the page again before a big spend: it can change.
To pay, Google's help names methods tied to the country. In the page on payment methods, the GoPay e-wallet is used for prepayments on an account whose billing address is in Indonesia and whose currency is the rupiah, and PayPal can be used for prepayments with an Indonesian address and US dollars, where it is offered. The methods available depend on the country, the currency and the payment setting: look at the Billing section of your account.
In Indonesia, the rupiah is the mandatory currency of transactions made in the territory. Bank Indonesia says so in its page on the obligation to use the rupiah: anyone, resident or not, individual or company, who carries out a transaction in the territory, in cash or not, must use the rupiah, with limited exceptions such as strategic infrastructure projects.
Offers of goods and services, including online, must be quoted in rupiah only. The same page bans dual price display and expressly covers offers made electronically in the territory. A landing page that shows your prices in rupiah saves you from thinking about it later: for a sale to customers in Indonesia, it is the safest option.
Whether your case falls under the rule is a legal question. It depends on who sells, from where and to whom. Have a lawyer or a local adviser look at it before you quote in a foreign currency. Keep the currency of your Google Ads account apart, as it is a separate matter: the rupiah is in the list of currencies Google Ads recognizes.
Google accepts no online gambling ad for Indonesia. Google's page on country-specific rules says an online gambling product that is not listed for a country cannot be advertised there. Indonesia has no entry in that list. The same page also bans promoting offline gambling in countries where advertising it is illegal, and names Indonesia among the examples.
Alcohol is outside the scope of targetable ads. Google's alcohol policy only lets you target these ads in the listed countries, and Indonesia is not among them: an ad that only targets locations outside the list is disapproved. Alcohol-free and very low-strength drinks are an exception, provided there is a Google certification and local limits are respected.
Political advertising is prohibited. Google prohibits, on its platforms in Indonesia, ads that feature candidates or parties for Indonesian elected offices. If you run an opinion or advocacy campaign, read the whole page before you write.
Medicines and healthcare have country-specific rules. According to Google's healthcare policy, pharmaceutical manufacturers can promote over-the-counter medicines under local law and with a Google certification, and telemedicine is allowed under conditions, with a LegitScript certification, without promoting prescription drugs in ads or on landing pages.
To see who already advertises from Indonesia, read competitors' ads before you choose your messages. Our guide to the Google Ads Transparency Center explains how to filter by country, and the one on who bids on your keywords compares the other methods. Have what you find translated by someone who reads Indonesian: an ad you cannot understand teaches you nothing.
Idul Fitri, more often called Lebaran, is a national holiday, and its exact date is set by a decision of the Minister of Religious Affairs. Wikipedia notes that Indonesians then return to their home town or village, an exodus called mudik. The joint decree of the three ministers publishes the public holidays and collective leave days each year, but leaves the exact date to that decision: the facts table at the top of the page gives the planned dates, to confirm as they approach.
Collective leave reduces annual leave, and the private sector decides for itself. According to the decree, taking collective leave reduces a person's annual leave entitlement, and in the private sector, each company's management sets it. Your customers, your carriers, your customer service or a partner may therefore be away for more or less time depending on the company: warn your teams and your partners.
Do not guess the effect on your searches: measure it. Open Google Trends set to Indonesia, compare your keywords around those days over several years, and note whether demand rises, drops or shifts. Then decide whether to raise, cut or pause your budgets, depending on what you deliver and who answers your customers during those days.
Harbolnas, the National Online Shopping Day, is another moment to watch in December. According to the Ministry of Trade page listed in the sources, the minister announces an edition spread over several days in December, designed to support fourth-quarter spending and extended this year to digital services. The press release of the Ministry of Communication on the previous edition describes it as an annual campaign, run with the online commerce association. Watch the official announcements and compare your keywords in Google Trends before you set your budgets.
Do not choose Presence or Presence or interest out of habit. According to Google Ads Help on geographic targeting, Google recommends Presence or interest for Search, and keeps Presence for sensitive sectors and for offers that only target people located in the area. For an offer limited to the country or to certain provinces, Presence avoids paying for clicks from people who are only interested in the location; for an offer that also attracts people abroad, the broader option can bring more conversions. Test, then read the report by location.
Do not copy the structure of a campaign from another country. One campaign per country and language keeps budgets, bids and reports readable. In Indonesia, add a layer only when your data justifies it, for example one campaign per location if your deliveries differ from one island or province to another.
Do not confuse the Indonesian Google page with the one from your home country. Ads, ranking pages and local results change with the country and the language: open the results page from Indonesia, in Indonesian, before you bid. Our guide to search intent in Google Ads explains how to read it.
Reading the Indonesian Google page keyword by keyword is the job of Should I Bid. Its intent analysis reads the Google results page in the country and language you choose, among 50 countries, then returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict with a score out of 100, and recommends negatives. Vision generates keyword ideas from a product or a page; it does not sort them. The tool works with credits, one credit per keyword analyzed: see pricing. An analysis can also target a large city of the country, as an optional setting.
Create a dedicated campaign that targets Indonesia, or a large area of the country, and choose Presence or Presence or interest depending on your offer. Write ads, keywords and landing page in Indonesian, because Google matches ads based on their language. Show prices in rupiah, check the rules for your sector, then run a capped test and read the search terms report.
In Indonesian, the language of the State according to the Constitution. Google Ads also recognizes Malay and English, but not Javanese or Sundanese. Rebuild your keyword list from Keyword Planner set to Indonesia and Indonesian, without going through a translation, and have the ads reviewed by a native speaker. Test English in a separate campaign.
For an account whose billing address is in Indonesia, PT Google Indonesia issues the invoices as a reseller, with a local VAT. For an account based elsewhere, the section of your country in Google's page on taxes applies. Google does not give tax advice: ask your accountant. The rate and the tax identifiers requested are in the facts table at the top of the page.
Bank Indonesia requires the rupiah in transactions made in the territory and asks that offers of goods and services, including online, be quoted in rupiah only, with no dual display. Whether your case falls under the rule depends on who sells, from where and to whom: have a lawyer review it before you quote in a foreign currency.
Not online gambling: Indonesia has no entry in the list of countries Google allows, and promoting offline gambling is also prohibited. For alcohol, Indonesia is not among the targetable countries; only alcohol-free or very low-strength drinks, once certified, can be advertised. Read the Google policy page for your sector.
Idul Fitri, more often called Lebaran, is a national holiday, and a joint decree adds days of collective leave, which the private sector sets company by company. The exact date is set by the Minister of Religious Affairs. Do not assume whether demand rises or drops: compare your keywords in Google Trends set to Indonesia, then adjust budgets and customer service. The planned dates are in the facts table.
Yes. Should I Bid reads the Google results page for the country and language you choose, among 50 countries, including Indonesia and Indonesian. It checks that page against your offer and returns, for each keyword, a Bid, Test or Skip verdict with a score out of 100. You can try it with free analyses, no credit card needed: see pricing.