DIGITS LIVE SESSION RECAP: TARGET STATE OF THE BUSINESS
Target’s New Chapter Is Showing Signs of Working. Here’s What the Data Says and What Brands Should Do Next.
DIGITS breaks down Target’s 2026 momentum, promotional strategy shifts, and the four biggest mistakes CPG brands are making at Target right now.
Target Is Turning a Corner, and the Numbers Are Starting to Prove It
Target has been through a rough stretch. Soft traffic, declining comps, and leadership transitions left many CPG brands questioning whether to invest or pull back. But the early data from 2026 tells a different story. DIGITS tracks sales performance across a $6 billion vendor footprint at Target, and the last two months have delivered the strongest comp trends we have seen in well over a calendar year. The new leadership team is executing, the promotional landscape is evolving, and brands that understand what is actually changing will be the ones positioned to capture share.
This blog recaps key insights from the DIGITS Live Insider Session on April 9, 2026, featuring DIGITS CEO Dave Glaza and VP of Retail Media Capabilities Chris Thron.
>Watch The Recorded Session Here <
Target under new CEO Michael Fiddelke and Chief Merchant Cara Sylvester is not the same Target that struggled through 2024 and 2025. The retailer has outlined four strategic priorities (leading with merchant authority, elevating the guest experience, accelerating technology, and strengthening teams and communities) and is backing those priorities with more than $2 billion in investment. For CPG brands, this creates a fundamentally different environment for promotional planning, retail media activation, and internal budget conversations. The question is no longer whether Target will recover. It is how quickly you can reposition your business to take advantage of the momentum.
Key Takeaways at a Glance
- DIGITS client sales comps at Target reached nearly +6% in March 2026, the strongest two-month stretch in well over a year
- Total promotional markdown spend is down roughly 5% year over year, but vendor-led promotional opportunities are expanding
- Multiples offers (buy two, four for $10) and BOGO promotions are significantly outperforming percent-off and sale-type deals in both unit lift and ROI
- Target Circle has fully evolved from a promotional channel to a loyalty platform, requiring brands to integrate Circle, TPCs, and weekly ad into a unified strategy
- Conquesting paid search remains in limited pilot with slower-than-expected rollout, but DIGITS still recommends planning for a 20% search budget increase when it scales
- Four common mistakes are costing CPG brands growth at Target right now
Is Target’s Business Actually Improving, or Are Brands Just Comping Soft Numbers?
Both, and that is actually a good thing.
DIGITS tracks monthly sales comps across its client portfolio, which spans approximately $6 billion in Target business across four merchandising pyramids. February and March 2026 delivered the best back-to-back comp performance in more than a calendar year. March specifically came in near +6%, which exceeded expectations. Dave Glaza acknowledged the soft year-ago comparisons but pointed out that the specific numbers are running ahead of what most people anticipated. Low single-digit gains were the baseline expectation. Low-to-mid single digits this early is a positive signal.
The more important dynamic is what momentum does internally. Positive comps change the conversation. When a sales report says +4% instead of -2%, it shifts how brands allocate budgets, how headquarters evaluates the retailer, and how aggressively teams pursue incremental funding. For large national brands in particular, Target’s return to positive territory could move it back into a “growth retailer” category internally, unlocking budget that has been difficult to secure over the past 18 months.
DIGITS recommends that brands start building the case for Q4 2026 and 2027 budgets now. Securing incremental funding takes time, and the brands that move early will have an advantage.
How Has Target’s Promotional Landscape Changed?
Target’s promotional strategy is undergoing a meaningful shift. Total markdown spend is down approximately 5% year over year, a trend that started in the back half of 2025 and has continued into early 2026. But the nature of the decline matters more than the number itself.
Through 2025, Target pulled back on promotional spending because it was not going to chase bad business with more discounts. In early 2026, the dynamic is different. With positive comps returning, Target does not need to lean on aggressive promotions to drive traffic. The result is a more sustainable promotional environment where the retailer is still promotional, but not reactively so.
For vendors, this shift is opening up more opportunities to run their own promotions. DIGITS segments Target promotions into three buckets: vendor-led, store-wide, and category-level. Category promotions still represent over half of all activity, but vendor-led promotions account for roughly a third and are where national brands should focus their optimization efforts. Vendor-led offers funnel 100% of the benefit to your business, while category-level deals spread that benefit across your entire competitive set.
The brands that are actively submitting vendor-led promotions are the ones driving incremental growth. The brands sitting on the sidelines waiting for category deals to carry them are losing share.
Which Promotion Types Are Delivering the Best Results Right Now?
The mix of what works has changed significantly, and brands running the same playbook from two years ago are leaving performance on the table.
DIGITS analyzes approximately 2,000 Target promotions per year through a custom Tableau reporting suite, measuring incrementality, ROI, and unit lift across every offer type. The data is clear: mandated multiples (buy two, four for $10) and BOGO offers are delivering the strongest ROI and unit lift by a meaningful margin.
That said, Chris Thron was careful to note that multiples and BOGO should not be the only tools in the kit. New item launches are a clear example where a percent-off or sale-type promotion makes more sense. You are trying to drive single-unit trial, not force a two-pack purchase on a product the consumer has never tried. The smart approach is to lead with multiples for core items and use percent-off strategically for launches and trial-driving moments.
DIGITS also tracks promo fatigue across its client base. Running the same promotion for multiple quarters in a row produces declining lift over time as consumers begin to expect and wait for the deal. Rotating offer types and refreshing your promotional calendar on a quarterly basis is essential to maintaining incrementality.
What Happened with the March 2026 Circle Deal Days?
Target ran its first major Circle Deal Days event of the year in March, one of three planned tentpole events (with another coming in summer and a third in October). DIGITS saw both positives and areas for improvement in the execution.
What worked: The depth of discount was compelling. A 40% benchmark made the event feel meaningfully different from the rotating weekly ad deals that have become the norm. The daily deals were curated with on-trend brands and culturally relevant categories, which is a direct reflection of Target’s merchant authority priority. In-store execution was solid, with rotating signage that matched the daily deal rotation. And Target’s social and marketing content leading into the event continues to stand out against Amazon and Walmart’s approach to similar events.
What missed: Target remains overly reactive to Amazon’s event calendar. The March event dates were not confirmed to the vendor community until just over a week before going live, which limits in-store execution and vendor participation. Target has a significant physical retail advantage over Amazon, with stores that can deliver experiential moments that pure e-commerce cannot. But that advantage is being underutilized when planning timelines are compressed to match Amazon’s schedule.
What Are the Four Biggest Mistakes CPG Brands Are Making at Target?
DIGITS identified four recurring patterns across its vendor conversations and client portfolio that are holding brands back.
Mistake 1: Relying on JBP/KVP status to earn growth levers. Large national brands with Joint Business Planning or Key Value Partnership status often assume that Target will provide sales plans, endcaps, and promotional support as part of the relationship. But Target is increasingly giving those assets to challenger and trend-driven brands that are generating social buzz and shopper excitement. JBP status does not automatically guarantee the same support it once did. Brands need to shift to a growth mindset that focuses on driving their own business week over week through the levers they control (promotions, search, media) and earning those assets back through demonstrated performance.
Mistake 2: Taking a passive role in the promo process. Target revamped its promotion execution and planning process roughly a year ago. The new system has longer lead times, strict guardrails, and very tight submission windows when Target does open the process for vendor input. Many brands find it complicated and simply sit out, defaulting to category-level promotions that Target runs. This is a missed opportunity. Brands need to have promotional shells pre-built, respond quickly when submission windows open, and follow up with buyer teams to ensure offers are actually running. Proactive brands are capturing vendor promotional slots that passive brands are leaving on the table.
Mistake 3: Operating siloed retail media functions. As retail media grew from a small experimental budget into a multi-billion-dollar channel, most CPGs built dedicated teams for search, Roundel, digital content, and promotions. These teams grew up independently, often with different KPIs and different agency partners. The result is that a director of Target sales at a major CPG sometimes cannot influence their own brand’s search strategy at Target. Search teams optimize for ROAS, which often means bidding on branded terms that deliver efficient returns but do not drive incremental growth. Sales teams want unit volume. When those objectives are not aligned and the teams are not talking to each other, brands lose the flywheel effect of coordinating promotions, search, and media together. CPGs need to push their local sales and shopper teams to understand how retail media works and actively influence strategy, not just defer to a centralized function.
Mistake 4: Maintaining a stale promotional playbook. What worked two years ago does not work the same way today. The shift to auto-applied Circle deals changed the economics of percent-off promotions. Multiples offers emerged as a more efficient tool. Promo fatigue erodes lift over time. Brands that set their promotional calendar once and run the same offers quarter after quarter are watching their incrementality decline. The fix is continuous measurement, quarterly rotation, and a willingness to test new offer structures rather than defaulting to what is familiar.
Action Steps: What You Can Do Next
- Build your internal case for Target investment now. With positive comps returning, start framing Target as a growth retailer in your 2027 planning conversations and your Q4 2026 incremental funding requests. The window to secure budget is before the numbers become obvious to everyone.
- Audit your promotion mix against current performance data. If your Target promotional calendar is still dominated by percent-off Circle offers, you are likely underperforming. Shift toward mandated multiples and BOGO as core offer types, reserving percent-off for new item launches and trial-driving moments.
- Own your vendor promotional submissions. Do not wait for Target to run category deals on your behalf. Pre-build promotional shells, respond to submission windows immediately, and follow up with your buyer team to confirm execution. Passive brands are losing slots to proactive competitors.
- Break down internal silos between sales and retail media. Ensure your Target sales team understands your search strategy, your Roundel investment, and how those programs align with promotional timing. Coordinated activation across all levers creates a flywheel that siloed functions cannot replicate.
FAQs
How does DIGITS measure Target promotional performance? DIGITS operates a Target Promo Center of Excellence, running every client promotion through a custom Tableau analytics suite. The system measures incrementality, ROI, unit lift, and markdown efficiency across approximately 2,000 offers per year, spanning a $6 billion client footprint. These metrics are not available through Target’s standard vendor reporting.
Are auto-applied Circle deals hurting promotional ROI? The shift to auto-applied deals changed which offer types perform best, but it did not kill Circle as a promotional channel. Multiples and BOGO offers have emerged as the most efficient structures in the auto-apply environment because they protect against discounting single-unit buyers who would have purchased anyway.
What is an 8112 coupon and why does it matter? The 8112 universal coupon standard promises better fraud control, cleaner redemption tracking, and more flexible digital offer execution. Target has been expected to adopt this standard, and if it launches later this year, it could reopen a more open vendor marketplace for promotional offers. Timing remains uncertain, but DIGITS is actively tracking the rollout.
Should smaller brands approach Target promotions differently than large CPGs? Yes. Smaller and challenger brands often have an advantage in the current environment because Target is actively seeking culturally relevant, on-trend assortment. These brands tend to be more operationally agile, submitting promotions faster and optimizing week to week. Large CPGs can learn from this approach by adopting a more bottoms-up, weekly growth mindset rather than relying solely on large-scale events planned months in advance.
Conclusion
Target’s new chapter is not just a leadership change. It is a strategic reset backed by investment, momentum, and early results. The brands that recognize this shift and adjust their approach to promotions, paid search, and cross-functional coordination will be the ones that capture disproportionate growth as Target’s business accelerates. The question for every brand selling into Target right now is straightforward: are you driving your own business, or are you waiting for someone else to do it for you?
DIGITS manages Target promotions, paid search, Roundel media, and offsite activation for CPG brands across the store. If you want to see how your promotional performance compares, where your search dollars are working hardest, or how to build a coordinated Target growth plan, reach out to our team. We will show you the data.
About DIGITS Agency
DIGITS is an omnichannel retail media agency specializing in Target, regional grocers, and alcohol retail media. As a Target Managed Services partner and Roundel Media Studio Certified agency, DIGITS helps CPG brands navigate retail media with strategic planning, hands-on campaign management, and proprietary analytics. Learn more at www.digitsagency.com.
Dave Glaza, Founder & CEO of DIGITS, remains committed to bringing digital capabilities to physical stores!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/
