A software company's first Google Ads campaign usually gets built in an afternoon. The keywords from Chapter 5 go in, the ads from Chapter 8 go in, and somebody clicks through the setup screens accepting whatever Google suggests. Most of those screens can be fixed later. Two can't.
When the account is created, Google asks for a currency and a time zone. Neither can be changed afterward. Google's help pages are blunt about both, and a software company that later bills overseas customers in their own currency, or moves its sales team to another coast, finds out the hard way that the only fix is a new account with none of the old one's history.
This chapter covers those two settings and the campaign settings that matter most for a software company at launch: which countries to target, which location option to choose, how language works now, which defaults to switch off and how to keep paying customers from clicking your ads. Each one takes a minute to set and costs real money to get wrong.
Currency Decides How Google Bills You and Time Zone Decides When Your Ads Run. Neither One Can Be Changed Later.
Google's help page on account settings puts it in one line: "Your currency is permanently set when you set up your account." The reason is billing. Every bid, budget and invoice in the account is in that currency.
The time zone used to be changeable. It isn't anymore. Google's current page says, "Time zone changes are no longer supported in standard serving accounts. If you need to manage your ads in a different time zone, you must create a new account." The time zone decides how reports are split by hour and day, and when an ad schedule turns ads on and off, since "Ad schedules are set based on your account's time zone."
For most US software companies, the right answers are simple: US dollars, and the time zone where the people who answer leads sit. If your sales team works in Chicago, pick Central time, even if the founders live in New York. The scheduling decision follows from it:
- A demo-led product sells through a meeting. Ads that run at 2 a.m. send leads to a calendar that can't book until morning, so a demo-led account can schedule ads to the hours the sales team can answer.
- A self-serve trial sells itself. Someone who signs up at 2 a.m. starts the trial at 2 a.m., so ads can run all day, which is Google's default.
Plan for the long term, too. Software sells across borders, and Less Annoying CRM, one of the sample companies from earlier chapters, advertises teams "in over 70 countries." If you'll someday bill a market in its own currency, that's a separate account, so decide which currency the first account belongs to before anything else.
Software Searches in India Bid About $3 at the Top of the Page. In the US, $56. Target Only Countries You Can Sell To.
A local business targets a city. A software company can target the world, which is exactly why it has to choose. We pulled the same 12 software buying searches, across CRM, project management, payroll and scheduling, in Keyword Planner for six countries where software buyers search in English:
- United States: about 428,400 searches a month, with a typical high top-of-page bid of about $56.
- India: about 118,540 searches, at about $3.
- Philippines: about 23,150 searches, at about $5.
- The UK: about 21,650 searches, at about $54.
- Canada: about 20,910 searches, at about $39.
- Australia: about 15,660 searches, at about $34.
Same searches, wildly different markets. "Crm software" alone draws about 49,500 searches a month in India, at top-of-page bids under $3. To a campaign set to target every country, those clicks look like a bargain. If your product, pricing and support are built for US companies, they're a bargain you can't sell to.
Some products answer the country question for you. A payroll or HR product built around US tax filings sells only in the US, so the campaign targets only the US. A CRM or project management tool might sell anywhere, but that doesn't mean every country belongs in one campaign. Start with the market where you already have customers. Give every added country a separate campaign and a separate daily budget. Mixed into one campaign, India's $3 bid estimates and the US's $56 sit side by side, and you can't see or control how the money splits between them. Start each one with a modest budget, and let the first weeks show what clicks actually cost before raising it.
Google's Default Location Setting Counts People Interested in a Country. A Software Campaign Should Reach People in It.
Picking the US as your target doesn't mean only people in the US see the ads. Google's help page says, "By default, location targeting includes both physical locations and locations of interest." Google names this default Presence or interest. Interest can come from the words in a search, a recent trip or the pages someone reads about the place.
For a travel or real estate business, that default makes sense: the person planning a move or a trip is the customer. For a software company, it mostly adds people who aren't buyers. Someone overseas researching US payroll rules, or a consultant comparing American CRMs for a report, can count as interested in the US.
In the campaign's settings, expand the location options and switch the target to Presence, which keeps the ads to people physically in, or regularly in, the countries you chose. It's one radio button, and it's the difference between targeting a market and targeting everyone curious about that market.
A Software Ad Written in English Reaches English Searchers, Whatever the Campaign Says. Write Each Market's Ads in Its Language.
Google changed how language works for Search this fall. Starting in September 2026, Google's language targeting page says, the language menu disappears from Search campaigns, and ads match searches by the language the ad itself is written in.
For a US software company running ads in English, little changes. For one selling to French-speaking Canada or to Latin America, the language is now set by the words in the ad, not a menu. Our reading: to reach French-speaking buyers in Canada, write French ads, send them to a French page and run them in their own campaign, so their results stay separate from the English ones.
Several of the sample software companies already maintain pages in other languages. Koalendar's sitemap carries comparison pages in seven. If your site has them, the ads can follow. If it doesn't, an ad in another language that lands on an English page is a promise the page can't keep.
A New Search Campaign Starts With Search Partners and AI Max Switched On. Turn Both Off Until Exact Match Has Proven Itself.
Several defaults in a new Search campaign widen its reach before the account knows what works. Google's pages state two of them directly.
- Search partners. Per Google's help page on its search network, a brand-new Search campaign already has search partners switched on. They're a few hundred outside websites plus YouTube, all showing Google's search ads. At launch, uncheck the box so every click comes from Google Search, where the results are easiest to read.
- AI Max. Google's setup page for AI Max says every new Search campaign gets it automatically. AI Max carries three passengers. Search term matching reaches past your exact match list to searches Google considers related. Text customization drafts ad copy from your site. Final URL expansion may route a click to another of your pages that Google thinks fits the search better. For the exact match campaign, switch AI Max off in the campaign settings.
- Display Network. Search campaigns can also show on the Display Network through a check box under Networks. Google's page doesn't say whether new campaigns start with it checked, so look, and leave it unchecked.
Isolation, the exact match campaign from Chapter 6, exists to prove which searches bring qualified leads. Each of these defaults adds traffic that you didn't choose, which makes the proof harder to read. They aren't bad features. Search partners can be tested later, and AI Max gets its own chapter, Chapter 13, once there's enough conversion data for it to learn from.
One default to keep: auto-tagging. Google switches it on for every new account, and it adds a click ID, the GCLID, to every ad click. Chapter 1's CRM connection sends it back with each qualified lead, alongside the hashed email, whenever your forms capture it. Confirm it's on before the first click.
A Customer Who Already Pays You Can Still Click Your Free-Trial Ad. Exclude Your Customer List at Launch.
A software company's existing customers search for its category all the time. They compare alternatives at renewal, look up features and search for the product's own help pages. When they click a free-trial ad, you pay for a visit from someone who's already paying you.
Google's Customer Match lets you upload a list of customer emails and exclude those people from your campaigns. Targeting people with a customer list is reserved for accounts with at least 90 days of history and over $50,000 in lifetime spend. Excluding them has no such bar. Google's policy says, "All policy-compliant advertisers can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match in the 'Observation' setting and for Exclusions." Export current customers from your CRM, upload the list in Audience Manager and exclude it from the non-brand campaigns. Refresh it monthly, since the list goes stale as customers sign up.
Your brand campaign is a different case. Customers searching your product's name to log in belong there, and Chapter 12 covers how to keep login searches from eating that budget.
Google also offers company size segments on Search: small employer (1-249 employees), large employer (250-10,000) and very large employer (10,000+). Add them to the campaign in Observation, not Targeting. Observation leaves your reach alone and shows how each company size performs. After a few months, you'll know whether the small companies or the large ones turn into qualified leads, and you can adjust bids on evidence instead of a guess.
Next: Performance Max Learns From Whatever You Count as a Conversion. A Software Account Should Wait Until It Counts Qualified Leads.
The settings are in place and the campaigns are ready to launch. The next question is when to add Google's most automated campaign type. Chapter 10 covers Performance Max for software and the conversion data it needs first.
Every chapter, from tracking to brand campaigns, competitor campaigns and the rules for free trials, is on the guide's home page. Chapter 8 covers the ads these settings will run.
On the software accounts we build through Google Ads management, the currency, time zone and country list get confirmed with the client before the account exists. If your account is already live, open the location options today and check whether it still says Presence or interest.
