Why the Taboola logo glows on LinkedIn

PUBLISHED 2 AUGUST 2026 · BY NIMROD YARKONI

First it was Wiz. Now Taboola's logo is lighting up in the LinkedIn feed too: on a recent iPhone, Pixel or MacBook, the white smiley and wordmark render visibly brighter than the white page around them, as if the logo were backlit. Try to screenshot it and the screenshot looks perfectly ordinary. Your screen is not broken, and neither is theirs. It is the HDR glow trick, and Taboola appears to be the latest major brand to run it.

What are you actually looking at?

The image carries an HDR color signal, the same technique behind the glowing Wiz logo. LinkedIn's upload pipeline strips most HDR metadata but keeps color profiles, so a file prepared this way arrives in the feed with its glow intact. On an HDR screen the white parts of the logo render in the display's spare brightness headroom, above the level the interface uses for normal white. On an SDR screen the same file is just a regular logo.

There is no filter, no animation and no CSS involved. The pixels themselves are flat. The only unusual thing in the file is the color information telling the renderer to treat those whites as HDR content. If you want the full mechanics of PQ curves and brightness headroom, they are in the technical write-up; the short version is that your screen has more brightness in reserve than "white" normally uses, and this file is allowed to spend it.

Why Taboola's logo is a perfect fit for the trick

Taboola's own brand guidelines call for the white version of their logo on colorful backgrounds because it makes the mark pop. That instinct is exactly what the HDR trick amplifies. A pure white smiley and wordmark on a solid blue background means the glow lands precisely on the logo and nowhere else. The background stays at a calm, normal level while the mark emits real extra light, which reads as a light source rather than an overexposed image.

This is the general rule for the technique: high-contrast graphics are the ideal input. A fully glowing photo just looks blown out, and smooth gradients can band at 8 bits per channel. A white mark on a flat colored background is the cleanest possible case, and both Wiz and Taboola happen to have exactly that.

The pattern: B2B brands are adopting it one by one

The lineage runs from Tom Nick's original write-up through Port.io, Slack, AlphaSignal and then the Wiz logo that made the trick famous, each one triggering a fresh wave of "is my screen broken?" comments. The full history, with teardowns and credits, is in the Wiz post. Taboola showing up in that list is notable for a different reason: Taboola is an advertising company. Their entire business is attention, and when an attention business starts using a trick to win attention in the feed, that says something about how well it works.

It also says something about the window. Every previous wave of this trick eventually got tone-mapped away somewhere: Slack has already patched glowing workspace logos, and platforms clamped the equivalent HDR video trick after it flooded short-form feeds. LinkedIn's image pipeline keeps color profiles today. When enough large brands are doing it, that is usually when platforms start looking at it. Useful now, not something to build a brand system on. If the window closes, the same file simply renders as a normal image and nothing breaks.

What's the catch?

• Not everyone sees it. Viewers on non-HDR office monitors, or phones in battery saver mode, see a regular logo with slightly dimmer whites. High-contrast inputs and moderate brightness give the most graceful fallback.
• Too bright reads as glare. Every viral wave produces the same complaints: it hurts, change it back. Standing out comfortably beats maximum brightness. Around 600 to 1,000 nits your mark clearly out-glows the feed without searing anyone's retinas at 9 PM, which is why Superwhite gives you a brightness slider instead of a fixed maximum.
• The effect is fragile by design. Screenshots, re-saves, cropping in LinkedIn's composer and messenger compression all strip the profile. Only the original exported file glows, so the glow does not travel with reposts.

How do you do it with your own logo?

You do not need Taboola's budget, or anyone's budget. The feed-post version of this takes about a minute:

1. Open superwhite.app and drop in your logo. A white or near-white mark on a colored background works best, exactly like Taboola's and Wiz's.
2. Set the peak brightness and the glow threshold so the mark glows and the background stays put. If you are on an HDR screen, the live preview shows exactly what your audience will see.
3. Download the HDR JPEG and post it to LinkedIn as a feed image. Do not crop or edit it in the composer, that strips the profile.

Everything runs in your browser and nothing gets uploaded. Sign in, exports from €2.99, unlimited up to 400px.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the Taboola logo look like it is glowing on LinkedIn?

The image carries an HDR color signal that lets its whites render above normal screen white on HDR displays, using the panel's reserve brightness. It is the same technique seen earlier on the Wiz logo. On non-HDR screens the image looks completely normal.

Is it a filter or an animation?

No. The pixels are flat and static. The only unusual thing in the file is the color information instructing HDR displays to treat the whites as HDR content. There is nothing to see in the pixels themselves, which is why screenshots look ordinary.

How can I make my own logo glow like that?

Embed an HDR color signal so the whites decode above normal screen white. Superwhite does this in the browser: drop in a logo, set the brightness, download the JPEG and post the file directly to LinkedIn without cropping or editing it in the composer.

Why do I see it on my phone but not on my work monitor?

The glow only renders on HDR-capable displays with HDR on and battery saver off. Most recent phones qualify by default; many office monitors and older laptops do not. On those screens the same file shows as a normal, slightly dim image, nothing broken.

Does the glow survive screenshots or reposts?

No. Screenshots capture the tone-mapped standard result, and re-saving, cropping or forwarding through messaging apps strips the color profile. Only the original exported file glows.

Will LinkedIn patch it?

Probably eventually. Slack has already tone-mapped glowing workspace logos and platforms clamped the equivalent HDR video trick. Treat it as attention arbitrage with a window. When the window closes, the file simply renders as a normal image.