Cloaking Referral Links

For years I've always used the embedded image approach for referrals (1x1 image w/ the referral link as the source). But I was wondering if there's a better way of pre-loading referral cookies without stuffing on a landing page. I'm basically looking for another whitehatish alternative to the referral links as images.

Using images still work, but browsers like chrome are starting to display a broken image icon on the page.