Legal Cookie policy
Every cookie, counted.
Short version: nothing third-party loads until you say so. Google Analytics, Google Ads measurement and our Calendly booking calendar all wait behind a banner whose two buttons carry equal weight. Allow measurement and the calendar is ready when you reach it; choose no thanks, or choose nothing at all, and Calendly stays behind a button you have to press. Everything is listed below rather than buried. Here is the whole picture.
Last updated 19 August 2026
01What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store, so that something can be remembered between requests. Related technologies do the same job by different means: local storage, session storage, pixels, and scripts that read information about your device. This policy covers all of them, and where we write cookie we mean the lot.
Some cookies come from the site you are visiting. Others come from a different company whose content is embedded in the page. Those are third-party cookies, and they are the ones worth paying attention to, because that company sees your visit too.
02The law, briefly
The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, PECR, govern storing or accessing information on your device in the UK. The rule is short: you need consent, unless the cookie is strictly necessary to provide the service the user asked for.
Strictly necessary is a narrow test. It means the service breaks without it. It does not mean useful to the business, or helpful for improving the site. Analytics is not strictly necessary. Neither is a booking widget you have not asked to use yet.
Where a cookie also processes personal data, the UK GDPR applies on top, and our privacy policy covers that half.
03Strictly necessary
These do not require consent, and you cannot turn them off without breaking something.
| Name | Set by | Purpose | Duration | Consent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
__cf_bm or equivalent host security cookie |
Our web host, first party | Distinguishes humans from bots and protects the site against abuse. Set by our host’s security layer, not by us, and only where that layer is active. | Up to 30 minutes | Not required |
Worth saying plainly
The site has no login, no basket and no account, and RankMedia writes no cookie of its own beyond the consent record described in section 06. The Google cookies in the table above are set on this domain by Google's tags, only after you allow them, and are listed there rather than glossed here.
04Non-essential third parties
These require your consent before they load, and none of them loads without it.
| Provider | Where | What it does | Data involved | Consent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 Privacy notice |
Every page, but only after you allow measurement in the banner | Counts visits and pages viewed so we know which parts of the site work. Sets _ga and _ga_* cookies (up to 13 months on this site's use; Google documents the exact lifetimes). | Pages viewed, approximate location, device and browser information | Your consent |
| Google Tag Manager & Google Ads How Google uses ad cookies |
Every page, but only after you allow measurement in the banner | Tag Manager loads our measurement tags; the Google Ads conversion tag records when a visit from one of our own adverts leads to an enquiry. May set _gcl_au and related conversion cookies (typically 90 days). | Whether a visit came from an advert and whether it led to an enquiry or booking | Your consent |
| Calendly Privacy notice |
The contact page and the foot of the home page | Embedded booking calendar. Loads a script from assets.calendly.com and sets cookies to run the widget, keep your booking session and prevent abuse. The widget itself also loads Stripe (js.stripe.com), Calendly's payment provider, which sets its own cookies even though we take no payment through it. Calendly's own documentation is the authority on the exact names and durations, which change. | IP address, browser and device information, time zone. Plus your name, email and answers if you actually book. | Required |
On typefaces, a note, because loading fonts from Google is a common way for a site to leak your IP address without meaning to. We do not do that. The three typefaces on this site (Fraunces, Archivo and Spline Sans Mono) are downloaded and served from our own domain under the SIL Open Font Licence, so rendering a page sends no request to Google and sets no cookie. There is nothing there to consent to.
05What we do not use
Listing absences is unusual in a cookie policy. We are doing it because it is the most useful thing on this page.
- No analytics without consent. Google Analytics 4 exists on this site, but it is listed in the table above and loads only after you allow it. Refuse, and we cannot tell you which pages you viewed, because we do not know.
- No third-party advertising networks. The only advertising tag is Google's, for measuring our own adverts, and it too waits for your consent. No Meta pixel, no LinkedIn Insight Tag, no programmatic remarketing networks.
- No heatmaps or session recording. No Hotjar, no Clarity, no Fullstory. Nobody is watching a replay of your mouse.
- No A/B testing tools.
- No data brokers, and no selling of anything to anyone.
If that changes
If we ever add another tag, it goes in the table above before it goes on the site, it will be non-essential, and it will not fire until you have consented. The date at the top of this page will change on the same day. That is exactly what happened when the Google tags above were added in August 2026.
06Consent, and the current position
Consent under the UK GDPR has to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous, and given by a clear affirmative act. Carrying on scrolling is not consent. A pre-ticked box is not consent. Nor is a banner with only an accept button.
The honest position today
The banner you see on your first visit is the affirmative act. Both of its buttons are the same size, the default is no, and "No thanks" means nothing third-party loads at all. Your choice is stored on your own device (a small local record called rm-consent, which is strictly necessary and holds nothing about you beyond the choice itself and its date) so we do not ask again on every page.
Beyond that, the site keeps its original discipline: we self-host our typefaces so no font request reaches Google. Calendly follows the same banner. If you allow measurement, the booking calendar loads with the page it sits on, because making you press a second button to see a calendar you came for helps nobody. If you decline, or have not chosen yet, nothing is requested from Calendly until you press "Load the calendar" yourself, which is its own affirmative act. Nothing non-essential is reached before you ask for it.
You can avoid the one third party entirely. Calendly appears only on the contact page and the home page, and only once you have allowed measurement or pressed the load button: decline, and you can use the email address or WhatsApp link instead and never touch Calendly at all. The typefaces are ours and load from our own domain, so there is nothing there to avoid.
07How to refuse or withdraw
Withdrawing consent must be as easy as giving it. Here is every route available to you.
- Click "Cookie choices" in the footer of any page. It reopens the banner. Choosing "No thanks" after previously allowing measurement switches the tags off and deletes the Google cookies this site set.
- Use a different route to reach us. Email hello@rankmedia.co.uk, or message us on WhatsApp or LinkedIn. None of these involve Calendly, and you get a human either way.
- Block the third parties in your browser. Section 08 covers it. The site still works.
- Delete cookies already stored. Clearing your browser's cookies for calendly.com removes anything it has set. Section 08 has the links.
- Ask us to delete what we hold. If you booked a call and want the record gone, email us and we will delete it, subject to the retention rules in the privacy policy.
- Tell us this page is wrong. If you inspect the site and find something we have not listed, tell us and we will fix the page. That offer is genuine.
Withdrawing consent does not make earlier processing unlawful. It stops it going forward.
08Browser controls
Your browser is the backstop, and it beats any banner. You can block all third-party cookies, block a specific domain, delete what is stored, or browse privately so that everything is cleared when you close the window.
Blocking cookies across the board will break parts of other websites, usually logins and baskets. It will not break this one. The only visible effect here is that the booking calendar on the contact page stops loading, and the fonts fall back.
Most browsers also offer a Do Not Track setting. It is worth knowing that DNT has no agreed standard and most sites ignore it, ours included, because there is nothing here for it to switch off.
09Changes to this policy
We update this page whenever the cookies or third parties on the site change, and the date at the top is the version marker. A cookie policy that is out of date is worse than none, because it misleads.
10Contact us
- +44 7957 599826
- Company
- Rank Media Ltd, registered in England & Wales, company number 13428453
- Regulator
- Information Commissioner's Office · 0303 123 1113
Related
Our privacy policy explains what we do with personal data, and our terms of use govern your use of this website.