Hosting its videos in the EU, with no cookie banner — City of Roubaix

A public authority that moved its video back to Europe

Roubaix is a city in the north of France, close to the Belgian border, and it films a lot. Municipal news, practical information, cultural and sporting life, the street art the city is known for, portraits of residents: the communications department produces a steady flow of videos, on top of the sessions of the city council, the elected assembly that governs the city.

Those videos used to be published on a consumer video platform. That gets content online quickly, but a public authority in Europe answers to a stricter brief than a brand does. Its content is public material: it has to be preserved, published under the authority’s own name, and shown to residents without advertising and without tracking them.

Since 2023, the City of Roubaix has relied on Videas, a European platform hosting its data in France, to host its videos, embed them on its website and run its own channel, ville-roubaix.tv.

The challenge: EU hosting, no tracking, no lost archives

Preserving the city’s videos

A local authority produces for today and archives for tomorrow. Ribbon cuttings, neighborhood reports, council sessions: together they form a municipal record that should stay available long after the news that prompted it.

The city was looking for a single place to file and preserve those videos, instead of leaving them on an outside platform whose filing and retention it does not control.

No more advertising, no more videos from other channels

On a consumer platform, a municipal video never stops on its own. It is preceded or followed by advertising, then rolls on to suggestions from other channels, picked by an algorithm rather than by the city.

For a public institution, that is a real problem: the official message ends up next to content the authority never chose and cannot rule out.

A cookie banner forced by the player

The third constraint was the most concrete one for the web team: a consumer platform’s video player drops third-party cookies. Showing a single video on the city’s website therefore meant putting up a consent banner, maintaining it, and handling the visitors who decline, on every page concerned.

For a public authority, that banner is also awkward in principle: residents come to read municipal information, not to be asked about advertising cookies while they do it.

The Videas solution

A video library that preserves everything

The city’s videos are filed and preserved in the Videas library, all in one place. The teams upload their productions, organize them and find them again when they need them, whether it is a video published last week or footage from last year.

Hosting is in the EU, on servers located in France. For a public authority, that is not a detail: the city’s content stays under European jurisdiction and under its own name.

A player with no advertising cookies and no third-party cookies

On the city’s website, videos are shown with the Videas player, which drops neither advertising cookies nor third-party cookies. The City of Roubaix therefore did not have to add a cookie banner in order to show its videos.

The player carries no advertising either, and suggests no other channels’ videos once playback ends. Visitors watch the city’s video, then stay on the city’s website.

A channel under its own name: ville-roubaix.tv

The city also runs its own channel, ville-roubaix.tv, called “Roubaix on TV” and built with Channels.

It gathers municipal news, practical information, culture, sport, street art and portraits of residents, organized into sections. It is a local television station in its own right, at the city’s own address and under its own identity, rather than one page among many on a shared platform.

Council meetings on replay

French city councils meet in public, and Roubaix publishes every session on replay on its channel once it has taken place. Residents who could not attend watch whenever they want, and elected officials have a stable link to every past session.

Results

Videos preserved:

• The city’s productions are gathered and preserved in one place, available to the teams whenever they need them.
• The city’s video record, council sessions included, stays accessible once the news cycle has moved on.

A website that stays simple:

• No cookie banner was added to the municipal website in order to show videos.
• The player carries no advertising and no other channels’ videos after the city’s own.

Distribution under its own name:

• ville-roubaix.tv gathers news, culture, sport, street art and portraits of residents under the city’s identity.
• Council meetings are published on replay after every session.

Why Videas for a local authority

The Roubaix case brings together what a local authority expects from a video platform:

• Content under its own name: the city hosts its videos itself, shows them on its website and on its own channel, without sharing the screen with anyone else.
• A player that imposes nothing on visitors: no advertising cookies, no third-party cookies, no consent banner to add in order to show a video.
• Lasting archiving: videos are filed and preserved in one place, for today’s teams as much as for tomorrow’s record.
• Hosting in the EU: a public institution’s content stays under European jurisdiction.

Videas has worked with the City of Roubaix since 2023, from the library that preserves its productions to the channel that brings them to the people of Roubaix.