It is a simpler design and works great. It works by adding mapping to your hosts file.
Everyone basically wants to exert just enough elbow grease to get something for free rather than contribute to the world they say they believe in.
"If you need ads to make money then your business should fail" is a common thing you'll hear among people who continue using sites/apps that depend on ads instead of investing in ones that don't.
If HNers can't even be bothered, then how is anyone else? We're going to be stuck in this status quo for a long time and the only survivors will be the large businesses that can afford it until the main websites people use are about as varied as our ISPs, maybe even the same.
Blokada does track how many ads it blocks and gives you a count (and notifications if you wish to be so notified [configurable]).
Both are free (as in the GNU 'freedom' definition as well as the 'beer' definition) so you could try both and see which you prefer.
You can install either:
DNS666: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/
or
Blokada: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.blokada.alarm/
from the F-Droid store: https://f-droid.org/en/
And achieve system wide ad blocking, without worrying about Google's selfish policies.