Ads are much harder to block on mobile. Especially on iOS, it's nearly impossible to block ads in a native app. There are some tricks you can do with a VPN but the coverage isn't great and it's error-prone enough that I don't bother, which means casual ad-block users like my sister will absolutely never go that route. So to the extent that mobile is the future, it seems ad-blocking is not a long-term solution.
As much as I like iOS, I agree with you and I am still waiting for a good ad-blocking solution.
But I am not sure it's ever going to come. Many smaller devs and studios publish free apps which they monetise only with ads. Not sure Apple wants to scare off millions of developers by officially streamlining app ad-blocking.
On iOS, VPN remains the only good choice so far, sadly.
