This week Skate’s issued its much anticipated Art E-Commerce and Media Report for Summer 2015. A key finding of Skate’s latest report is that the listing platforms of auction houses and galleries are under growing competitive pressure from eBay as well as the independent digital strategies of their own clients.
As a result of significant efforts made by a number of auction houses on digital marketing, there is a shift in the power balance away from listing platforms to the auctions.
With eBay coming off a strong marketing campaign during this auction season, eBay is poised to gain more traction with the development of its Live Auctions as a sound alternative to listing platforms. While generously funded by venture capital firms in 2013-2014, listing platforms will be forced to respond quickly or else see their business model become obsolete.
In view of these recent dynamics happening in the art e-commerce and media space, Skate’s expects the following developments summarized below:
- Consolidation across all the segments – a series of mergers and acquisitions in art-media and art-listing platforms already this year immediately followed by consolidation in the online art-trading space.
- Continued investment by major auction houses in their digital marketing with Sotheby’s just behind Christie’s in terms of digital audience size in Q3 2015.
- Response by major galleries to the digital challenge in the same way as major auction houses already did by investing in their own digital strategies.
- With eBay pushing into the art-auction listing space and gaining traction, eBay will increase its market share and listing-space dominance further this year in the United States.
It will be interesting to see how these expected developments evolve in the near future.
To access Skate’s Summer 2015 Art E-Commerce and Media Report, click here.