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I've been reading about the Pi hole ... https://docs.pi-hole.net/ . Do you set it up to be the DNS server for your entire network (home network, presumably) , and then, point all your home devices to it for DNS (via DHCP to make it automatic)? So when you say, it's protecting your phone, that's because your phone is on your home wifi network and thus getting DNS from the pi hole?

Yes as long as the router supports changing the DHCP DNS settings. Unfortunately my router does not as it's a crappy one that came with the service. Instead I just assigned a static IP to my phone and changed DNS manually.

In your phone settings?

Yeah, on Android it's set on the wifi settings.

But that's only at home?

(By the way I got my pump..fairly hefty wee guy. Just waiting for the plumber to install the service valves.)

Pi hole isn't really applicable to my situation, but it looks great. The merchandise shop is terribly overpriced, but otherwise I like it.

I just played around with this - on my Samsung S7 Android, I go to Settings / Connections / WiFi / (under 'current network', select your current home network ) / (here you see your current network speed, IP address, etc) / choose 'edit' / choose 'show advanced options' / (here, I see option for DHCP or static). If I choose 'static', I can then type in the ip address I want to assign, the default gateway, the DNS server (which in my case was set to the default gateway, although secondary DNS is preset and unchangeable at 8.8.4.4, which I believe to be google's DNS).

You can only do this for the WiFi network on your phone (I presume, unless Caretaker knows something more), so when you are out and about on the cellular network, you are going to have to accept the IP, DNS, etc from the carrier. I just turned off WiFi on my phone and confirmed the ip changed to a routable, non-private address presumably from Verizon.

So at best, you can only use this method to block ads when you are at home, which is pretty useless to me since when I'm at home I use my lovely, highly readable, lightweight 15.6" laptop not my horrible-to-use phone with relatively postage-sized screen!

Not sure what you mean by "on the video itself" . Do you mean the short video adds that precede the start of a video or the little add windows that cover some of the video and can often be removed by clicking on the X in the window ? I have Mozilla Firefox with Ad-Block Plus, and it stops both these kinds of advertising.

Fair enough. I rarely use my laptop anymore. All my youtube and general web browsing comes from my phone.

Some ads are inserted into the chosen video.
For example, you're watching a trailer, it plays for 30 seconds, then there's a non-dismissable 10 second ad, then the rest of the trailer.

How is a "trailer" different from an "ad". Some of the ads I see are trailers, some are not.

If you're talking about a trailer being a YT video you chose to watch, how is it different from any other sort of video?

Another anecdote - this is a new highwater mark for me - I have just been offered a (skippable) 48m53s food/diet docu-ad.

FWIW it was ahead of a 7:25 video about guitars, and I don't watch videos about food, nutrition, cooking, or diets.

Well, I don't know if I want to obsess over the definition of an 'ad'. Everything's selling something.
I've got grass to watch grow.

Docu-ad?

If you are running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi server could you not also run PIVPN on the server? That would, I think, mean that Pi-hole was active even when out and about?