Social media is playing a bigger role in online art sales as well as at the auction houses this year. According to Arttactic, 24% of purchasers said they were directly influence by the feeds of an artist, museum or other arts enterprise:

Sales of art online rose to $2.64 billion in 2014, from $1.57 billion the previous year, according to a report to be issued on Tuesday by the British insurance company Hiscox. Online art buying, the report found, accounted for 4.8 percent of the value of the global art market, which it estimated at $55.2 billion.

The findings were based on responses from 519 international art buyers surveyed through ArtTactic’s client mailing list, Twitter, Facebook and the mailing list of Own Art, a British online art seller. […]

Almost half of this year’s respondents, or 49 percent, said that they had bought art online in the last 12 months, up from 38 percent last year.

Online Art Buying Rises in New Market Report (ArtsBeat/NYTimes.com)