[jgowdy]

This argument appears multiple times in this thread. However, realistically I've never seen a mainstream website that was drastically disadvantaged by their tracking mechanisms. I'm concerned that a lot of the tech savvy people who are making this claim may be working on severely outdated machines for which this makes a difference. With even the cheapest Dell computer sold today, it doesn't really matter, which is why everyone is tracking everywhere. I'm not a huge fan of ping, but the idea that websites are going to choose not to track with JavaScript based on the bad UX on a years old Core 2 Duo is just absurd. The economic incentive you are imagining does not exist, thus ping isn't truly eliminating a critical UX difference between tracked and untracked websites.

TL;DR ITT: "Link auditing / ping will eliminate the disadvantages of tracking!" - Ad Industry and sites that serve tracking: "What disadvantages?"