Target
Expect More. Pay Less. Become Inventory.
$85B
Value Extracted
7
Key Initiatives
Target is the mass retailer that turned being liked into an advertising business. Its Roundel retail-media network generated $649 million in 2024 ad revenue, up 25% year over year, and grew 35% through Q3 2025 while comparable sales fell 2.7%. It converted its free loyalty program into a $99-per-year Circle 360 membership in 2024. EnshitifAi assigns Target an Extraction Index of $85B.
The Story
Target spent thirty years being the retailer people actually liked — the design collaborations, the red carts, the affectionate nickname nobody assigned to its competitors. We helped them understand that affection is not a brand attribute; it is an unmonetized asset sitting on the balance sheet at zero. The shopper who enjoys the store browses longer, and the browsing is the product. Roundel now sells that behavior back to the brands on the shelf, at margins the retail floor has never once produced, while the retail floor itself shrinks.
Common Questions
Is Target enshittified?
By EnshitifAi's reckoning, yes — quietly, and from the inside. Its ad business grew 35% through Q3 2025 while the actual stores posted a 2.7% sales decline, which tells you which business is now the business. The free loyalty program became a $99-a-year membership in 2024, and the shopper data that funds Roundel is generated by people who think they are just buying paper towels.
What dark patterns does Target use?
Retail media — turning your browsing and purchase history into ad inventory sold back to the brands whose products you were already looking at. Loyalty-to-subscription conversion, where Target Circle became a $99/year (or $10.99/month) Circle 360 tier in 2024. And self-checkout, which removed the cashiers and then, in 2023, restricted the lanes to 10 items, leaving customers with fewer staffed registers and a shorter line they no longer qualify for.
What is Roundel and how much does Target make from ads?
Roundel is Target's in-house advertising network, which sells access to its shoppers to the brands stocked in its own aisles. It booked $649 million in ad revenue in 2024, up 25% from $522 million in 2023, and reached $621 million through Q3 2025 — a 35%-plus increase. Target puts Roundel's total value near $2 billion and expects it to double within five years.
Why are people boycotting Target?
In January 2025, four days into the new administration, Target eliminated its minority hiring goals and dissolved the executive committee it had created for racial justice. A boycott led by Rev. Jamal Bryant followed, and foot traffic fell for at least ten consecutive weeks — down 9% year over year in February 2025 and 6.5% in March — with traffic and revenue still depressed through August 2025.
Key Achievements
- 1
Built Roundel into a $649 million ad business in 2024 — up 25% from $522 million in 2023, and up more than 35% to $621 million through Q3 2025 — during a period when Target's own comparable sales fell 2.7%, establishing that the shoppers are now more profitable as an audience than as customers
- 2
Guided investors that Roundel's roughly $2 billion in total value will double within five years, making the advertising network, rather than the stores, the stated growth engine of a retailer that sells physical goods
- 3
Converted Target Circle from a free loyalty program into a paid tier in 2024 — Circle 360 at $99 per year or $10.99 per month — charging membership for the delivery convenience that the loyalty program had been the reason to join
- 4
Eliminated its minority hiring goals and disbanded its racial-justice executive committee in January 2025, four days into the new presidential administration, having spent the preceding five years marketing those commitments as evidence of what distinguished Target from its competitors
- 5
Absorbed a boycott led by Rev. Jamal Bryant with at least ten consecutive weeks of declining foot traffic — down 9% year over year in February 2025 and 6.5% in March, with traffic and revenue still down through August 2025 — a durable demonstration that the goodwill was real, which is precisely why it was worth spending
- 6
Benefited from an industry environment in which 19% of US adults told Ad Age and The Harris Poll in March 2025 that they had stopped buying from brands that reversed DEI commitments, a number small enough to survive and large enough to prove the affection had been load-bearing
- 7
Removed cashiers in favor of self-checkout and then, in 2023, restricted those lanes to 10 items or fewer — leaving the customer with a store that has fewer staffed registers and an express lane they are no longer eligible to use
For thirty years people called us Tarzhay, and for thirty years we did not have a line item for it. Roundel is that line item. The affection was always there; we simply had not been invoicing it.
B. Cornell
Chief Affection Monetization Officer
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