To launch Google Ads in Italy, target the country or a region and write ads, keywords and landing page in Italian. Add a separate campaign for any other language Google Ads recognizes, such as German or French. Sardinian or Friulian are not in its list. Taxes, the surcharge and the gambling rules are in the facts table at the top of the page.
Key takeaway: Launch an Italian campaign in Italian, add another language only if Google Ads recognizes it and you are after a specific audience, target the region that matters, read the Italian Google results page of each keyword before you bid, and check the rule for your sector before you write.
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official languages | Italian: “the official language of the Republic is Italian” (article 1 of Law no. 482 of 1999). Article 2 protects the language and culture of Albanian, Catalan, Germanic, Greek, Slovene and Croatian populations, and of those who speak French, Franco-Provencal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian | Normattiva, Law no. 482 of 1999 “Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche” |
| Languages Google Ads supports | Italian (code it). Among the languages protected by Italian law, Google Ads also supports German, French, Slovenian, Croatian, Greek and Catalan; Albanian, Franco-Provencal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian are not in its list | Google Ads API, language codes |
| Currency | Euro (EUR): Italy, an EU founding member in 1957, has used the euro since 1999 (cash since 2002) | European Central Bank, “Our money” (euro area) |
| Search engines (share of searches) | Google 87.31%, Bing 5.97%, Yahoo! 5% (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Mobile vs desktop | Mobile 51.78%, desktop 46.61%, tablet 1.61% of page views (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Google Ads billing entity | Google Italy s.r.l. (“Google Italy Reseller” section): Google's page names it the counterparty to contracts for the “Affected Products” referenced in a notice, Google Ads included, until further notice. The section shared by European Union countries is titled “Google Ireland Limited” | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| VAT on Google Ads | Business account with a VAT ID: according to the section shared by EU countries, Google does not add VAT (unless the purpose is “eligible non-business”) and the advertiser self-assesses VAT at the rate of its member state (Article 44 of Directive 2006/112/EC). The Italy section adds country-specific cases: exemption for the habitual exporter (declaration of intent sent to the Italian tax authorities), split payment for eligible entities, VAT exemption for San Marino and Vatican City addresses (local e-invoice at 0%), CUP/CIG codes requested by some public administrations | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| Country VAT rate | 22% (standard rate of Italian VAT, IVA). Reduced rates of 4%, 5% and 10% apply to specific goods and services | Agenzia delle Entrate (Italian tax agency), “Norme generali e aliquote” |
| Country-specific Google surcharge | +2.5% added to the next invoice or statement for ads served in Italy (“Italy Regulatory Operating Cost”, 2% before July 1, 2024); Google explains it as covering part of the cost of complying with Italian Digital Services Tax legislation | Google Ads Help, “Jurisdiction-specific surcharges” |
| Online gambling (Google rule) | Only lotteries with deferred drawing are allowed, and the operator must be a state-run entity, after Google certification. No online gambling-promoting content (aggregator or affiliate sites) is listed for Italy, so it may not be advertised there. Promotion of offline gambling is prohibited where it is illegal to advertise offline gambling, and Google lists Italy among its examples | Google Advertising Policies, “Gambling and games” |
| Gambling and betting advertising (Dignity Decree) | Banned in any form, even indirect, on any medium, including the internet and social media (Article 9 of Decree-Law no. 87 of 2018, known as the Dignity Decree). Excluded from the ban: national lotteries with deferred drawing, local games of chance and the safe and responsible gambling logos of the customs and monopolies agency. Administrative fine imposed by the communications authority (AGCOM), payable notably by the client and the site owner: 20% of the value of the advertising, never below 50,000 euros per violation | Normattiva, Decree-Law no. 87 of 2018, Article 9 “Divieto di pubblicità giochi e scommesse” |
| Price reduction announcements (goods) | According to the FAQ of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy on Article 17-bis of the Consumer Code: for goods (not services), a price reduction announcement refers to the “previous price”, the lowest applied to all consumers in the preceding 30 days, on the channel where the purchase is made (online or in store). In collective or general advertising (several stores, many products), the final price or the discount percentage alone may be enough, provided the previous price is shown at the point of sale, including the online product page | Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT), “Annunci di riduzione di prezzo, domande frequenti” |
| Language of ads and destination pages | Not allowed: ad or destination content in a language that Google Ads language targeting does not support (example given by the rule: languages missing from its list, which is the case of Sardinian, Friulian or Ladin) | Google Advertising Policies, “Unsupported language” |
| Ferragosto (Assumption) | August 15, national public holiday: Article 2 of Law no. 260 of 1949 (text in force since January 1, 2026) names “the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary”, and Law no. 54 of 1977, which removed several holidays from the list of public holidays, does not mention it | Normattiva, Law no. 260 of 1949, Article 2 (public holidays) |
| End-of-season sales (saldi) | Regions set the periods and duration of end-of-season sales (Article 15, paragraph 6, of Legislative Decree no. 114 of 1998): check the calendar of each region. During these sales, the discount is expressed as a percentage of the normal selling price, which must remain displayed (paragraph 5) | Normattiva, Legislative Decree no. 114 of 1998, Article 15 (extraordinary sales) |
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 Italy, or the regions where you sell, as the location. The Presence option targets people located there; Presence or interest, which Google generally recommends for Search, also reaches people who are only interested in the country.
For a nationwide campaign, write ads, keywords and landing page in Italian: Google matches ads to searches based on their language. For a specific audience in German, French or Slovenian, create a separate campaign or ad group, with ads and landing page in that language. The facts table at the top of the page lists the languages Google Ads recognizes.
If your offer only sells in some areas, target the regions, provinces or cities where it sells, then widen after a test. If your customers live abroad, target their country and write in their language. The available location types vary from one country to another: type the name of the region in the settings and see what Google offers.
Start from Keyword Planner set to Italy and Italian, not from a translation. Our guide on how to choose Google Ads keywords covers the method. Then open the Google results page from Italy, in Italian: the Should I Bid intent analysis does this reading keyword by keyword and returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict.
Have the ads and the landing page written, or at least reviewed, by a native speaker of Italian. Show your prices in euros and, if you announce a discount on goods, the reference price that the Italian rule asks for.
Read the Italy section and the section shared by European Union countries in Google's tax page, then check on your invoices which Google company appears on your account. With a VAT ID, you self-assess VAT; Google also adds a surcharge specific to Italy. Ask your accountant what is recoverable.
Some sectors have country-specific rules. Gambling, for example, is banned from advertising by Italian law in nearly every form, and Google only allows deferred-draw lotteries run by a state operator. Read Google's 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 note Ferragosto and the sales dates of your regions, and measure the effect in Google Trends set to Italy.
For Search, language is decided by your ads and your keywords: write them in Italian. Google removed the language setting from Search campaigns: ads are now matched based on their language, and Google gives priority to ads in the language of the search term. To reach your audience, you keep the geographic location, meaning the country or a region. One campaign, or at least one ad group, per language remains the most readable structure.
Italian is the official language, but the law protects others. According to the law on historical linguistic minorities (references in the sources at the bottom of the page), the Republic protects the language and culture of Albanian, Catalan, Germanic, Greek, Slovene and Croatian populations, as well as of those who speak French, Franco-Provencal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian. The facts table at the top of the page repeats this rule.
Google Ads recognizes only some of these languages, and a rule rejects the others. According to the Google Ads API language list, German, French, Slovenian, Croatian, Greek and Catalan are in it, while Albanian, Franco-Provencal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian are not. Yet Google's unsupported language rule does not allow ad or destination content in a language that language targeting does not support. To speak to those audiences, write in Italian, the official language, or in a language Google Ads recognizes that your target understands, and read the rule again before you write an ad.
In two regions, another language is placed on the same footing as Italian, and a third region protects a minority. In Aosta Valley, the special statute of the region puts French on the same footing as Italian. In the Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol region, the Constitutional Court recalls, in a ruling, that German is put on the same footing as Italian. Finally, the law protecting the Slovene minority covers the provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Udine, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. A campaign in German, French or Slovenian therefore makes sense when your offer addresses one of these audiences, with ads and landing page written in that language, on the area concerned.
Do not mix two languages in the same ad or the same page. Google matches the ad to the search based on its language: an ad and a landing page in a single language give it a clear signal. The list below sums up the structure to keep.
Google Ads can target all of Italy, a region, a province, a city or a postal code: the list of locations Google publishes for its API contains them. In that list, Italy exists as a country, with its regions, provinces (including the autonomous provinces of Bolzano and Trento), cities and postal codes. Google Ads Help on location targeting says the available location types vary from one country to another and that a location that is too small may show ads only intermittently, or not at all.
The right targeting depends on where your customers are, not where your offer is. Google illustrates this with a hotel in Spain aimed at English speakers living in England: it targets England and writes its ads in English. Applied to Italy: if you sell a stay, a course or a product located in Italy to people who live elsewhere, the location to target is theirs, and the language is theirs. If you only deliver or serve in Italy, target the country or the regions where you sell.
Presence or Presence or interest: a real choice. According to the same help page, broad targeting, Presence or interest, also reaches people who have shown an interest in the location without being there, and Google generally recommends it for Search. Presence makes sense when you only want people located in the area, or when your sector is sensitive. For an offer limited to Italy, start with Presence, then compare with the location report of your account.
Test one region before you generalize. The ads shown, the competitors and the prices can vary from one area to another: look at the results page from the target region before you set a bid ceiling. Our guide on who bids on your keywords compares the methods. A Should I Bid analysis can also read the results page of a large city in the country, as an optional setting.
Google clearly dominates search in Italy, but the facts table at the top of the page shows a visible share for Bing and for Yahoo!. A Google Ads campaign only buys ads on searches made on Google: it covers neither Bing nor Yahoo!. For those engines, check with each how to buy its ads, and set your volume goals accordingly.
The facts table shows that mobile slightly leads desktop in page views in Italy. So do not build your landing pages for a single type of device: open them on both. After the first days, look at the device report of your own account: the split of page views in a country says nothing about the split of your customers.
Measure the real demand of your sector before you set a budget. Open Keyword Planner set to Italy and Italian, then Google Trends set to Italy, and compare your keywords over several months. Engine and device shares give an order of magnitude for the whole country, not the demand for your offer.
Google's tax page names two companies for Italy: read your invoices to know which one applies to you. In Google's page on taxes by country, the Italy section, titled “Google Italy Reseller”, says Google Italy s.r.l. is your counterparty to contracts for the products referenced in a notice, Google Ads included, until further notice. The section shared by European Union countries is titled Google Ireland Limited, and both show when you pick Italy in the page. The payments profile and the invoices of your account tell you which company appears there.
For a business account in the European Union, VAT follows a self-assessment rule. According to the shared section, when you enter a VAT ID, Google does not add VAT, unless you chose the “eligible non-business” purpose, and it is up to you to assess and pay it at the rate of your member state, under an article of the European VAT directive that Google cites. The facts table gives the standard rate of Italian IVA published by the Agenzia delle Entrate, the tax authority. Ask your accountant what is recoverable in your case: Google says it cannot give tax advice.
The Italy section adds cases specific to the country. It provides a treatment for the habitual exporter, who must send a declaration of intent to the Italian tax authorities. It also covers split payment, which Google determines every month from the public eligibility lists and the tax code (codice fiscale) of your payments profile, a VAT exemption for San Marino and Vatican City addresses, with a local e-invoice, and the CUP and CIG codes that some public administrations ask for on their invoices. If one of these cases is yours, ask your accountant for advice.
Google adds a surcharge specific to Italy, and it shows on the invoice. The list of jurisdiction-specific surcharges names Italy: an “Italy Regulatory Operating Cost” is added to the next invoice or statement for ads served in Italy, to cover part of the cost of complying with Italian digital services tax legislation. The facts table gives the percentage. Google says the surcharge follows the impressions or clicks served in Italy, including if your campaign does not explicitly target it, that it is not refunded when they respect your targeting settings, and that applicable taxes are added on top. It appears on a separate line in the invoice and in the Transactions section of your account.
Italy uses the euro. The European Central Bank lists it among the euro area countries: show your prices in euros in your ads and on the landing page.
Google regulates gambling country by country, and the list for Italy is very short. On the country-specific rules page, Italy only allows, for online gambling, lotteries with deferred drawing, with a state-run operator. No online gambling-promoting content, such as an aggregator or affiliate site, is listed for Italy, and Google says that what is not listed for a country may not be advertised there. The same page lists Italy among the countries where promotion of offline gambling is prohibited.
Italian law bans, in principle, any advertising for gambling and betting. Article 9 of the Dignity Decree bans any form of advertising, even indirect, on any medium, including the internet and social media, with a few exclusions, among them national lotteries with deferred drawing. The administrative fine is imposed by the communications authority (AGCOM) and can target notably the client and the owner of the site that carries the ad. The facts table gives the detail. If you work in this sector, ask an Italian lawyer for advice before you launch an ad.
For promotions, Italy regulates the reference price. The FAQ of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy on Article 17-bis of the Consumer Code says, for goods and not for services, that the “previous price” of a price reduction announcement is the lowest one applied to all consumers over the period set, on the purchase channel. The facts table gives that period. In collective or general advertising, the final price or the discount percentage alone may be enough, if the previous price is shown at the point of sale, including the online product page. This FAQ is guidance from the ministry, not a statute: ask your lawyer how to apply it to your ads, and check that the landing page shows the previous price when the ad promises a discount.
In advertising to consumers, the price per unit of measure goes with the selling price. According to Article 14 of the Consumer Code, advertising in all its forms and catalogs show the price per unit of measure when the selling price is shown, except for exemptions set by law, and the section does not apply, among others, to products supplied in the course of providing a service. Check with your lawyer whether this concerns your products.
Google's rules vary from one country to another and from one sector to another. Health, finance, alcohol, regulated products: open Google's advertising policy page for your sector and look for the mention of Italy before you write the ads. A rejected ad delays the launch and skews your first results. To see who already advertises from Italy, our guide to the Google Ads Transparency Center explains how to filter ads by country.
Ferragosto is a national holiday, in the middle of summer. The law on public holidays names it among the holidays, and the law that removed several holidays from the list does not mention it. The facts table at the top of the page gives its date. Your customers may be off that day, and your own team, your carriers or your customer service may be away too.
Do not guess the effect on your searches: measure it. Open Google Trends set to Italy, compare your keywords around Ferragosto 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 on those days.
The sales have no single calendar: the regions set the periods and the duration of end-of-season sales. That is what Article 15 of the legislative decree reforming trade provides, in its sixth paragraph. A national sales campaign can therefore start or stop on different dates depending on the region: check the calendar of each region where you sell before you schedule your ads and budgets.
During these sales, announce the discount as the law describes it. The same article asks that the discount be expressed as a percentage of the normal selling price, which must remain displayed. For goods, the ministry FAQ adds that the reference price is the “previous price” seen above. Write your ads and your landing page with the same values, and have your wording reviewed by a lawyer.
Do not translate your keywords from another country. Rebuild the list from Keyword Planner set to Italy and Italian, then read the Italian results page before you bid. Our guide to choosing keywords explains the method. Then pick out, in the search terms report, the variants your customers really type (with or without an accent or apostrophe, singular or plural, casual or formal) and add them, as keywords and as negatives. Our comparison of negative keyword tools helps you manage these lists over time.
Have the ads and the landing page written by a native speaker of Italian. A machine translator does not judge the tone, the choice between the informal and the polite form of address, or the words your sector really uses. A native review also keeps your brand and product names in the form your customers type.
Do not copy the structure of a campaign from another country. One campaign per country and language keeps budgets, bids and reports readable. Add a regional location only when your offers, delivery times or rules differ from one region to another, and name your ad groups by language to see which one pays off.
Do not confuse the Italian 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 Italy, in Italian, before you bid. Our guide to search intent in Google Ads explains how to read that page.
Reading the Italian 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 (for Italy, the language offered is Italian), then returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict with a score out of 100, and recommends negatives. It reads Google, not Bing or Yahoo!. The tool works with credits, one credit per keyword analyzed: see pricing. To find starting ideas from a product or a page, Vision generates them, and you then have them analyzed.
Create a dedicated campaign that targets Italy, or the regions where you sell, with the Presence option if you only want people on site. Write ads, keywords and landing page in Italian: Google matches ads based on their language. Plan for the invoice and IVA, check the rules for your sector, then run a capped test and read the search terms report.
Not in languages Google Ads does not recognize: Sardinian, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan, Franco-Provencal and Albanian are not in its list, and its rule rejects content in an unsupported language. Write in Italian. German, French or Slovenian only make sense for a specific audience, in a separate campaign or ad group, with a landing page in that language.
Yes. Google's location list contains the Italian regions, the provinces, including the autonomous province of Bolzano, cities and postal codes. A very small location can limit delivery: test first at the scale of a region. To speak German in South Tyrol, create a campaign or ad group in German, with a landing page in German: the language comes from the ads, not from a setting.
Google's tax page names Google Italy s.r.l. in its Italy section, and Google Ireland Limited in the section shared by EU countries: read your invoices to see which one appears on your account. With a VAT ID, Google does not add VAT, unless the purpose is eligible non-business, and you self-assess it. Google also adds a surcharge specific to Italy. The rates are in the facts table at the top of the page; ask your accountant.
Very little. Italian law bans any form of advertising for gambling and betting, with exclusions such as national lotteries with deferred drawing, and Google only allows for Italy lotteries with deferred drawing run by a state operator, after certification. Gambling aggregators and affiliate sites are not listed there. Ask an Italian lawyer for advice before any launch.
The regions set the periods and the duration of end-of-season sales: check the calendar of each region where you sell. During these sales, the discount is expressed as a percentage of the normal selling price, which must remain displayed, and for goods the ministry asks you to refer to the previous price. Have your ads reviewed by a lawyer, and check that the landing page shows the same values.
Yes. Should I Bid reads the Google results page for the country and language you choose, among 50 countries, including Italy in Italian. It checks that page against your offer and returns, for each keyword, a Bid, Test or Skip verdict with a score out of 100. It reads Google, not Bing or Yahoo!. You can try it with free analyses, no credit card: see pricing.