I treat it as a multi-layered thing. The hosts file is good since it is portable across systems (Linux/Android and Windows) and handles most software. "Ad blockers" are nice because they go that extra miles in the web browser.

That said, I wish that I didn't have to do that. It is unfair to ad supported websites. On the other hand, bandwidth on mobile devices is expensive and advertisers aren't willing to respect that. Not only are the individual ads large, but they aren't cached. Even on the desktop, they fail to acknowledge that the form of advertising has to be appropriate to the website. If the website is visual (text or images), having audio in the advertising is a huge faux pas. If the content of the site is serious (news or research oriented), animation is distracts from the content. Add a 30 second advertisement to the top of a 5 minute video clip, and I'm okay with it. Do the same to a 2 minute video clip, and you're wasting the viewer's time. Oh, and please stop tracking me. Advertisers can target demographics based upon the content rather than the user. The former doesn't violate my sense of privacy while the latter does.