I've been using adguard home for ages to block ads at the router level. I also have an instance running on OCI free tier so I can do DNS based adblocking when away from home.
My partner has been complaining about seeing ads on the Goodreads app for a while. Recently I've been seeing tons of ads on news sites as well. I know we are properly using adguard, tracker domains are blocking and I can see our devices in the query logs.
After some googling I'm seeing people say DNS ad blocking isn't very useful anymore. So what is the next best option for android devices? Local VPN based blocking? What app do you use?
The best way to avoid ads on mobile is to not use apps that serve ads. Android firefox can have real ublock origin installed, use that to go to websites rather than using those sites' apps.
If you use YouTube still, you can also switch the website to desktop mode on Firefox Android and get background play.
Or install Morphe and forget that ads and sponsored segments even exist
there's an extension called "video background play fix" that also does that without needing to go to desktop mode