This cookie policy explains how the Metropolis Group use cookies on its websites. It explains what cookies are used, why they are used and how you can control them.

1. What are Cookies?

Cookies are very widely used by website owners to make their websites work or to work more efficiently, as well as to provide reporting information. Cookies are written to the hard drive of a web user; they contain no personal information about the website user and only keep a record of the sites visited and actions on the website. Some cookies expire after your browser is closed whilst others stay on your hard drive. Cookies set by the Metropolis Group are “first-party cookies”, cookies set by other parties other than Metropolis are called "third-party cookies".

2. Functional Cookies

The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. On this website;

  • Functional cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features.
  • Without these cookies, the services you have asked for such as remembering your login details cannot be provided.
  • These cookies cannot be disabled.
  • The cookies collect anonymous information on how you use a website.
  • The data stored by these cookies never shows personal details from which your individual identity can be established.
  • Without these cookies, we cannot learn how the website is working to make improvements that improve your browsing experience

3. Marketing Cookies

Technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. On this website, these would be either Targeting or Social Media Cookies

  • Targeting Cookies - These cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advert as well as help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. They remember the websites you visit and share that information with advertisers. Third parties may serve cookies on your computer or mobile device to serve advertising through our Websites. These companies may use information about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide relevant advertisements about goods and services that you may be interested in. They may also employ technology that is used to measure the effectiveness of advertisements. This can be accomplished by them using cookies or web beacons to collect information about your visits to this and other sites in order to provide relevant advertisements about goods and services of potential interest to you. The information collected through this process does not enable us or them to identify your name, contact details, or other personally identifying details unless you choose to provide these.
  • Social Media Cookies - These cookies allow you to log in and share content or what you’ve been doing on our website with friends on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. These cookies are not within our control. Please refer to the respective privacy policies of the social media provider on how their cookies work.

Both first and third-party cookies and their purpose are described in the table below.

Cookie Description
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Google Analytics (_ga, _utma,_gid, _gat) The cookie is set by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
Adobe Analytics (s_ppv, s_tp, s_cc) The cookie is set by Adobe. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors
Google reCAPTCHA The cookie is set by Google. Google Recaptcha is a tool for preventing spam and abuse of our website.
Google Ads The cookie is set by Google. Non-personalized content and features but to improve reporting on campaign performance, and to avoid showing ads the user has already seen. For example, cookies to help us determine how many times users who click on our ads end up taking an action on the site, such as making a purchase.
AWSALB This cookie is set by AWS. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing Application Load Balancer (ALB) is a popular AWS service that load balances incoming traffic at the application layer across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, in a region.
WordPress (wordpress_logged_in_) WordPress, our CMS uses cookies for authentication. That means that in order to log in to your account, you must have these cookies enabled in your browser
MBM-CUT This cookie is associated with the MBM MyAccount area where user authentication and profile management solutions are handled. For example, to facilitate logins to the various services and to securely maintain your personal information.
Targeting Cookies
_banderole_seen This is an advertiser cookie which we use to help us to track the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.
test_cookie This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the users' browser supports cookies.
YouTube (GPS, YSC, PREF, VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE) This YouTube cookies are set by Youtube and is used to track the number of views of embedded videos, bandwidth estimations and store user preferences.
Bing Ads (_uetsid_exp, _uetvid) These cookies are used to store and track visits across websites.
Google Ads Optimization This service is mostly used for showing advertisements
Microsoft Clarity (_cltk, _clsk) These cookies are used to store unique user ID's and store and combine pageviews by a user into a single session recording
Optimizely (OptimizelyPendingLogEvents, optimizelyEndUserId) These cookies are used to store unique user ID's of experiments and sessions for A/B testing
Facebook (_fbp, datr, _fbm_) These cookies are used to store account details, track visits across websites and provide fraud prevention.
Adobe experience cloud (AMCVS_@AdobeOrg) This cookie is used to to store last-visit information
Google Adsense (_gads, _gcl_au) These cookies provide ad delivery, retargeting, storing, and tracking conversions.
Twitter (metrics_token) Twitter cookies are used to store if the user has seen embedded content and provide load-balancing functionality.
LinkedIn (bcookie, li-oatml, li_sugr, lidc) LinkedIn cookies are used to provide ad browser details, delivery, or retargeting.
Instagram (actppresence) This cookie is used to store ad display frequency

4. How do I control cookies?

You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. You can exercise your cookie preferences by amending your web browser controls. These browser controls will usually be found in the “options” or “preferences” menu in your toolbar. The “help” portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to stop or manage cookies.
To opt out of third-party cookies, here are some options:

  • To opt-out of ad targeting cookies set by Google and Doubleclick on our Site, click here.
  • To disable the display of advertisements served by Criteo, click here.
  • To generally opt out of receiving personalized ads from third-party advertisers and ad networks who are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) or who follow the Digital Advertising Alliance's (DAA) Self Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioural Advertising visit the opt-out pages on the NAI website and DA website or click here.
  • In order to control the collection of data for analytical purposes by Google Analytics, you may want to visit the following link.

For instructions or more information on how to configure your browser settings to reject cookies being served by companies that are not part of the NAI or DAA, click here. You can also delete all cookies that are already on your computer's hard drive by searching for and deleting files with "cookie" in it.
We may update this Cookie Statement from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.

If you have any further questions please email data.privacy@metropolis.co.uk.