Policy

Advertising policy

This website is free to read and may carry a small number of advertisements. This page explains how that works, whose cookies are involved, and how to opt out.

Effective date: 1 October 2026 · Last reviewed: 1 October 2026

How ads are served on this site

Advertisements on this website, where shown, are served by Microsoft Advertising, the advertising platform associated with Bing and Microsoft's partner sites. When a page loads, your browser requests an ad directly from Microsoft's servers, and Microsoft chooses which ad to show. We do not choose the individual advertisements you see, and we do not receive a list of which ads were shown to which visitors.

Advertising here supports the cost of hosting this small site. It has no influence on anything we write about the practice, and we do not accept advertising from other bookkeeping or accountancy firms.

Microsoft's use of cookies and data

To serve and measure ads, Microsoft may use cookies and similar technologies that recognise your browser across visits. These are used to: count how many times an ad has been seen; limit how often the same ad appears; measure whether an ad led to a visit; and — only where the law requires and permits — decide which ad is most likely to be relevant to you.

Microsoft acts as an independent data controller for this processing, under its own terms. Its advertising policies are at about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/policies, and its privacy statement is at privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement. We recommend reading both if you want the full detail.

Personalised and non-personalised ads

Personalised ads are chosen using information about your interests and previous activity, which Microsoft infers from cookies, your signed-in Microsoft account (if you use one), and partner data. Non-personalised ads are chosen without that profile — typically based only on the content of the page you're reading, such as this site's bookkeeping pages.

On this site, personalised advertising cookies are set only if you accept them in the consent banner. If you decline, any ad you see will be non-personalised, and no advertising cookies will be placed by us.

How to opt out

You have several routes, and they work independently:

On this site: choose "Decline" in the cookie banner, or use "Cookie settings" in the footer to change your choice later. This stops advertising cookies from being set here.
Microsoft's settings: Microsoft's ad personalization page lets you turn personalised ads off across Microsoft's services: account.microsoft.com/privacy/ad-settings.
Industry opt-outs: the Digital Advertising Alliance at optout.aboutads.info and the Network Advertising Initiative at optout.networkadvertising.org let you opt out of interest-based advertising from many participating companies at once.
Your browser: blocking third-party cookies in your browser settings prevents most advertising cookies from being set anywhere.

Note that opting out stops interest-based advertising; it does not remove advertising altogether — you will still see ads, just not chosen using a profile of you.

Questions