What is a cookie banner?
A cookie banner is the message that appears when you land on a site, asking whether you accept its cookies. Its job is to collect a genuine choice before any non-essential cookies are set.
Why sites have them
Under PECR and GDPR, analytics and marketing cookies need consent first. The banner is how that consent is collected and recorded. We go deeper in why every website asks about cookies.
What a compliant banner needs
- Accept and reject options that are equally easy to use. "Accept all" with a buried reject is not valid.
- No non-essential cookies set until the visitor chooses.
- A link to your cookie policy and a way to change the choice later.
For wording, see what a cookie banner should say.
The mistake that breaks most banners
The banner looks fine, but the tags fire anyway, before anyone clicks, or regardless of the choice. That is both a compliance problem and a data problem. The fix is wiring the banner to Consent Mode so tags genuinely wait, and switch to privacy-safe modelling on a decline. If yours sends analytics to zero after install, that is the usual cause.
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