Insurer Hiscox has released a new online art trade report for 2016, and it includes a ranking of online art market players.

Hiscox's Robert Read blogs:

Millenials love tech, social media and art and given the enormous spending power that they are going to have the art market needs to adapt more quickly if they want to have a future. 

New players and the existing market are rising to the challenge slowly. The market remains fractured and populated by lots of small players who struggle to understand and invest in the challenge ahead.

Read continues in the foreword:

The online art market has continued to grow strongly (up 24% to $3.27 billion) despite the global art market slowing in 2015.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s do really well in our newly created Online Art Platform Ranking 2016, but have they done enough or are they still stuck in a time warp?

Dealers are struggling to deal with the online challenge but remain insulated from reality as the traditional model still works (just about) and most are too small to take such a high risk gamble – probably a case of damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Finally, in the online art world, mobile devices are becoming our weapon of choice and social media is becoming increasingly influential in persuading us that the Emperor’s new clothes really are magnificent.

Despite a decrease in global art auction sales in 2015 , the online art market grew an estimated 24% last year, indicating that the lower end of the art market could be more resilient to a slowdown than works selling in the mid- to high-end price range.