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I'm not sure how well advertisers would go for ping-back. The problem with it is, they really have no way of knowing whether a book copied to a PC, a PDA, a second PC (maybe at work) and a smartphone are being seen by "different sets of eyes"... those could all be my computers. An advertiser wouldn't want to feel they are being charged for more people than are seeing their ads. With a per-download pricing, they know exactly what they are paying for. And if others see their ads through sharing, they are actually saving money.
Publishers may not like it that way, but on the other hand, by the point that advertisers bail them out, they've lost the right to argue about it.
Again, if advertisers were subsidizing to the extent that the books were free, no proprietary formats or DRM would be needed, in fact, would work counter to what the advertisers wanted... maximum viewings. So I'm sure they would encourage a good all-around freely-available format. ePub might be just the ticket for them because e-readers can be designed to convert it themselves, or it can be converted to any other format as needed.
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