Target Roundel audit: on-site, off-site and measurement

Most of what a brand can buy through Roundel sits away from Target.com — display, social, video and streaming bought against Target Circle data — and it is the half that audits skip, because it is the half that never appears in a product-ads export. This is a two-week read of your Roundel programme, on-site and off, ending in a spend plan you can act on and a measurement specification you can hold the network to. What we read: Twelve months of spend split by placement and by buying route: self-service product ads, managed off-site, in-store, and anything bought as part of a larger commitment. Every closed-loop deck and lift study Roundel has given you, checked for what was compared with what. Your item data as it currently stands in Partners Online. Your own paid social and streaming plan across the same period, because duplication between your brand buy and the off-site half of your retail media buy is where we most often find money sitting twice. The off-site question: Off-site retail media is bought like brand media and reported like retail media, and buyers rarely see the frequency distribution behind the guest reach number. We ask for it. We look at how much of that audience was already reachable through your own buying at a lower cost, whether the read was on store sales or on clicks, and what share of the programme was bought because it was offered rather than because it answered a question somebody had. What you get: A written verdict, twenty to thirty pages, naming what to stop, what to move and what to keep, with the reasoning attached to each line rather than gathered in an appendix. A reallocation across on-site, off-site and in-store with a figure against each. A measurement specification: holdout design, the data Roundel must supply, and the questions to put to their team before the next flight is agreed. Then two sessions, one with your team and one with your agency if you want them in the room. What this audit will not do: We do not buy media, take rebates, or accept commission from any network, which is the only reason we are able to write that your spend should be smaller. We do not accept a network-supplied lift study as a finding; it is evidence to be examined, not a conclusion. We do not audit programmes our own people have run. And we do not write ammunition — if the real brief is a document that justifies a decision about your agency already taken, this is the wrong purchase and we will decline it. Timing: Book it before your next annual commitment is signed, not after. An audit delivered in the week the plan is locked is entertainment. The useful window is six to eight weeks ahead of the conversation with Roundel, with your item data and reset calendar to hand. Who should not book this: Brands spending under roughly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year through Roundel; the audit will not find enough to pay for itself and we will say so on the call rather than take the fee. Target Plus sellers with no shelf presence, where the store half of the measurement is missing and the findings would be thin. Teams that cannot get twelve months of clean spend data out of their agency — though we can tell you exactly what to ask for, so that next year is different.