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The main difference to my knowledge between an ad blocker and pihole is while a ad blocker downloads the ad but doesn't show it a pihole blocks it from being downloaded.
In addition you can block anything(not just ads) so if you want to say block reddit you could add *.reddit.com to the block list and it will block it even though it's not a ad service.
A good adblocker like ublock origin would bit download the ad. It is just as effective as DNS based blocking (pi-hole) with the added feature of also being able to do script blocking and cosmesic blocking.
uBlock Origin does actually block network requests before they leave your browser. The main difference is that Pi-hole can block requests from any application on all your networked devices. Theoretically you can achieve the same effect of a Pi-hole with a hosts file (except DNS caching), but that would involve setting up and maintaining one on every device you own... if that's even possible (looking at you, Android and IOS)
My thanks
Thank you :)