For blocking, I would much rather run my own service.

I've been loving the Pihole setup I just set up. It uses Quad9 as the upstream provider and then I do all the blocking myself. I used to use NextDNS but this is so much better and free!

Technitium is also really good as a performant local blocker and recursive dns server. I have been running mine for years now and it is fast as well.

How do you block ads when you're outside of your home network? Do you expose your pihole outside?

I set up a WireGuard VPN and use that to connect back to my home network. It's fast enough for what I do on my phone.

VPN back to your home network?

Yeah I have a VPN set up. I don't have the best internet so sometimes it's slow (mostly just app downloads seem to take the longest, so I'll just disable it and then re-enable it.) But it works just fine for streaming, including video

I've assumed the latency suffers then

You could set it up to only route DNS, but that might be complicated for most people