Back in 2020, social media replaced art fairs as the third most successful means for galleries to sell art, moving up from sixth place in 2019, primarily due to the pandemic. This was reported by Artsy Gallery Insights 2021 Report. Yet, there were already tell-tale signs of the shift towards online appetites as far back as 2014, when Vogue declared that Instagram was “the world’s most talked about new art dealer”.

In the years since, social media has bolstered the creation of art world celebrities such as Banksy and Takashi Murakami who have 12 million and 2.5 million followers respectively, comparable with pop stars. It is not a coincidence that works by both artists are in-demand commercially as well. Even art galleries have benefited from social media popularity with the likes of Unit London, a mid-sized London-based gallery founded by millennials, boasting 584,000 followers on Instagram, not so far behind international mega gallery David Zwirner’s 780,000 followers.

Artsy’s Art Industry Trends Report 2023 indicated that social media outweighed in-person art fairs as the most important marketing channel this year, with 43% of respondents choosing social media and 39% opting for in-person art fairs.

Additionally, younger galleries, with reported sales mostly driven by collectors from 35 to 55 years old, cited Instagram as the method used to sell the most artworks. In fact, almost twice as many younger art dealers preferred the social media platform as compared to their older counterparts, at 24% of younger galleries vs. 13% of older galleries. The younger galleries also focused more on ultra-contemporary artists than their older peers.

These figures epitomize the recent digital disruption of the art market where galleries, dealers, artists, and their ilk have found ways to facilitate image making, productivity, and profits via the use of social media, very much aligning with the influencer economy.

However, this strategy may not suffice in the long-term as most social media sites today seem to be in crisis. In early June, thousands of online communities went private on Reddit, one of the most widely used discussion websites of our time, in a bid to protest regulatory changes eliminating most third-party apps on the platform.

As detailed by VICE last December, young people are no longer impressed by aesthetically pleasing Instagram grids, while Twitter witnessed a mass exodus ever since Elon Musk’s disastrous leadership takeover. Newer platforms such as TikTok and BeReal have their limits in terms of inter-generational reach or daily use. Yes, everyone is hyped up about Threads but remember the short-lived yet intense popularity of Clubhouse?

Meanwhile, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2011 to 2021, linked historically high rates of depression, suicidality, and other mental health issues in youths with social media usage. Early this year, nearly 150 product liability lawsuits were filed in the U.S. against the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.

While the US Supreme Court may have ruled in favour of the social media titans this month, user sentiments present a different picture.

In the above-mentioned VICE report, Dr Mark Wong, a University of Glasgow lecturer researching social media and digital interactions, stated that the ethical ramifications of certain platforms had a massive effect on how people used them in 2022.

While major art market players tend to adopt a blinkered view in the face of lucrative opportunities when it comes to any possible adverse impact on society, equity, and the climate, droves of users losing trust in social media and abandoning platforms could very well cause them pause. 

What does this mean for the technologically obtuse art market? Livestreaming has definitely become a popular option since pandemic lockdowns but another online alternative that may hold sway is the oft-underestimated email campaign or newsletter.

According to findings shared at an Arts Marketing Association conference in 2022, emails drive 173% more conversions than social media. Moreover, Artsy’s Art Industry Trends Report 2023 revealed that 60% of its respondents chose email newsletters above all other options for their most important marketing channel.

Perhaps this is the year for art dealers to reinvent the email newsletter.

A version of this analysis was originally commissioned by London-based Pictorum Advisory for their June quarterly report.