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Joining Target Circle means Target tracks your purchases and how you interact with offers, and uses that data not just for rewards but also for personalized advertising purposes.
This analysis describes what Target's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
Loyalty program participation generates detailed transaction-level data about your purchasing behavior, which Target uses for advertising in addition to the stated benefits of personalized offers and rewards.
Interpretive note: Whether Target Circle membership creates a financial incentive arrangement under CPRA that requires specific value disclosure depends on how regulators interpret the relationship between loyalty benefits and advertising data use.
Enrolling in Target Circle provides you with discounts and personalized offers, but it also means your detailed purchase history and offer interaction data are used to build an advertising profile used for targeted marketing. This data may be shared with Roundel and third-party advertising partners as described elsewhere in the policy.
How other platforms handle this
You can limit to what extent we use your personal information for these purposes.
In certain circumstances, the right to data portability, which means that you can request that we provide certain Personal Data we hold about you in a machine-readable format
For data portability requests, We will select a format to provide Your personal information that is readily useable and should allow You to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.
Monitoring
Target has changed this document before.
Receive same-day alerts, structured change summaries, and monitoring for up to 20 platforms.
"When you participate in Target Circle, we collect information about your purchases, interactions with our offers, and other activities. We use this information to personalize your experience, provide you with relevant offers and rewards, and for other purposes described in this policy, including advertising.Excerpt from Target's Privacy Policy
1. REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: Loyalty program data is personal information under CCPA/CPRA and analogous state statutes, subject to disclosure, access, deletion, and opt-out rights. The FTC Act applies to material omissions about how loyalty program data is used. California's Automatic Renewal Law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act may apply to aspects of the loyalty program relationship if it involves automatic charges or enrollment. State consumer protection laws in multiple jurisdictions may be implicated if the data uses of loyalty program information are not clearly disclosed at enrollment. 2. GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: Medium. The use of loyalty program data for advertising purposes is disclosed in the policy, which is an important transparency measure. The compliance risk lies in whether this use is adequately disclosed at the point of loyalty program enrollment, not only in the privacy policy, and whether consumers have a practical means to participate in Target Circle without their data being used for advertising. 3. JURISDICTION FLAGS: California consumers have the right to opt out of the sharing of loyalty program data for cross-context behavioral advertising. If Target Circle membership is conditioned on accepting advertising-related data uses, this may engage CPRA provisions on financial incentives for data collection, requiring disclosure of the good-faith estimate of the value of consumer data. 4. CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: Partners participating in Target Circle data sharing arrangements, including Roundel's advertising clients, should be subject to appropriate data use restrictions. Any Marriott, Ulta, or other co-branded loyalty partner integrations should be assessed for compliance with applicable privacy laws given the cross-brand data sharing implications. 5. COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: The enrollment flow for Target Circle should include clear disclosure that purchase and behavioral data will be used for advertising purposes, not only rewards. A documented process for consumers who wish to participate in Target Circle but opt out of advertising data use should be established, consistent with CPRA's financial incentive disclosure requirements.
Regulatory citations, enforcement risk, and due diligence action items.
Ad personalization controls removed. Contact scanning added. Advertiser data partnerships quietly dropped. A timeline of every change.
Provision-level monitoring, governance timelines, and regulatory mapping built from archived source documents and historical version tracking.
Loyalty program participation generates detailed transaction-level data about your purchasing behavior, which Target uses for advertising in addition to the stated benefits of personalized offers and rewards.
Enrolling in Target Circle provides you with discounts and personalized offers, but it also means your detailed purchase history and offer interaction data are used to build an advertising profile used for targeted marketing. This data may be shared with Roundel and third-party advertising partners as described elsewhere in the policy.
ConductAtlas has identified this type of provision across 295 platforms. See the full comparison.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Target.