The iGaming gaze: affiliates and the latest eye-tracking findings

The portrayal of casinos in popular culture is hopelessly outdated. Modern gambling is no longer just about the old Vegas atmosphere where middle-class Americans test their luck on weekends. The familiar model of globalisation is shifting toward regionalisation, where local markets are becoming increasingly important, each carrying distinct cultural and social characteristics. Accordingly, every time we launch a product in a new geo, we encounter the unique needs of that specific market.

In our early experiments, we tried to identify a universal formula for success that could be applied across different countries. But it quickly became clear that the modern world moves in waves – what users love today might change tomorrow. This is shaped not just by trends, but also by cultural forces that influence those trends. 

Many researchers have tried to understand this context. Various typologies, such as Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, have been developed. However, general observations have failed to address how specific users would respond to a new product. That’s why, for the past five years, we’ve been testing our interfaces under laboratory conditions across regional user samples.

The death of universality 

For a long time, it was believed that human interaction with an interface follows the “figure-and-ground” law of attention distribution. This concept, borrowed from Gestalt psychology, suggests that the brain instinctively distinguishes a central object from its surrounding background. Assuming this is universally true for global users, this principle has inspired design paradigms that focus on highlighting key elements through minimalism and a clear visual hierarchy.

However, it turned out that focused attention is more typical for Western users from Canada, the USA, the UK and the Czech Republic. Users from Japan, China and Taiwan, by contrast, exhibit what is known as contextual attention. They not only perceive the central element but also actively explore peripheral areas of the interface. Their gaze scans the screen more broadly, capturing context, relationships between elements and overall composition. Information located at the edges or within background elements is not perceived as “noise” – it is actively integrated into decision-making and understanding. Linguists have linked this phenomenon to the unique reading patterns of users accustomed to ideographic writing systems.

Does your data confirm this?

We expected to find differences between Asian and Western European groups, but we didn’t fully understand what to expect from users on the African continent. Since Pepper Partners conducts research worldwide, we replicated the same experiment across our active regions. The stimuli were identical: two prototypes of a real betting product interface, translated into local languages. The first version contained a single visual dominant; the second included three. We recorded fixation duration on objects and background, as well as gaze movements (saccades).

The results supported our assumptions: viewing patterns in Europe and Asia differ significantly. While processing the eye-tracking data, we noticed that African users from Tunisia and Nigeria behaved differently from both Singaporean and Austrian users. 

Overall, African users’ gaze behaviour most closely resembled that of Eastern European participants from Hungary and Poland. Specifically, African users tended to fixate longer on key interface elements and make shorter eye movements with minimal deviation from the dominant focus, while Asian participants distributed their involuntary attention more evenly.

How do African users gaze? 

On one hand, African users display signs of contextual attention, where perception of the interface is more balanced. Users with contextual visual perception prefer having multiple objects within their field of view – think of any Japanese website or Tokyo’s Shibuya district, where numerous colourful, animated banners flank the streets. Such users can easily process large volumes of visual information, although they may take longer to fully interpret it. 

For example, Nigerian and Tunisian participants fixated longer on interfaces with two dominant elements, resembling Singaporean participants, indicating a more “contextual” visual type that thoroughly processes complex scenes. Participants from other cultures, such as Austria, Hungary and Poland, showed less pronounced differences or a more balanced distribution.

On the other hand, certain aspects of African users’ eye-movement behaviour resemble the European “analytical” visual type, typically characterised by short saccades – quick eye jumps between focus points. This is associated with the habit of concentrating on one or several dominant elements in sequence, while ignoring the background or context. 

Surprisingly, among the six countries analysed, the shortest saccades were observed in the Nigerian and Tunisian samples, followed by Poland and Hungary, then Austria and Singapore. For example, Nigerians' saccades are, on average, 13% shorter than those of Singaporean users, while Tunisians' are 11% shorter.

Thus, African users are not entirely similar to either Asian or European users. Moreover, we identified a unique pattern specific to African participants: significantly longer fixations on interface dominants overall. In total, Nigerian and Tunisian participants fixated on dominants 17% longer than Singaporeans and 16% longer than Austrians.

Localisation in practice 

Our primary research objective is to provide practical guidance or our affiliates, and here is what we recommend:

• Since participants from Africa, particularly those from Nigeria and Tunisia, tend to have a more contextual perception, content should feature visual compositions that cover a larger portion of the screen to attract and maintain attention. Place important information in various parts of the screen, allowing viewers to visually "navigate" the scene, which aligns with a more contextual perception strategy.
• However, avoid excessive complexity or an overload of details. Despite their tendency to perceive the entire scene, participants dedicate a considerable amount of time to this, and over time, their initial motivation to purchase the product may decrease.
• To direct the attention of African users to key elements and help them grasp the main messages more easily, use visual cues such as arrows, colour accents or animation. Consider their cultural background to ensure images and scenarios are relevant and easily interpretable, which will enhance recognition and engagement.

The results expand traditional notions of “Western” and “Eastern” models of perception. The study demonstrates that diversity exists even within cultural groups, and that attention patterns may manifest in far more complex ways than a simple “analytical vs. contextual” dichotomy.  

We also identified subtle differences within Europe and Africa, emphasising the need to consider a broader spectrum of cultural nuances when designing localised interfaces. This is why we will continue to study and apply our findings in practice when developing and launching digital products.

While we still rely on classical frameworks such as cultural-dimension typologies for benchmarking, our focus has shifted toward data-driven, hardware-based analysis that reveals real behavioural patterns. We have already implemented several joint research projects aimed at adapting existing digital products – and we continue to design interfaces guided by scientific expertise and a deep understanding of human perception.