Sites are starting to work around Pihole and other ad blockers

A couple of the sites I regularly visit have started hosting ads on their own domains but in a special ads directory. E.g. if the site was http://www.freestuff.net then they are starting to put the ads in http://www.freestuff.net/adstuff/ instead of hosting th ads on well known third party ad domains that are easily blocked. As such, adblockers like pihole seem powerless. Either you block the whole domain or suffer with the adds.

Are there any plans to combat this tactic?

thanks

You could use Pi-hole alongside with uBlock Origin as your browser plugin.

The thing with self hosted ads is that Pi-hole (or for that matter ANY DNS resolver (only) based Ad-blocker) , can't tell the difference between legitimate content and ads, when they are hosted on the same server.
Pi-hole blocks only DNS requests (based of course, on the lists).

For tackling the issue where the content is hosted on the same domain, one would need to run the queries through a filtering proxy (one that looks for particular strings, files, names) and filters those requests (basically what uBlock Origin, Ad-Block and the rest are doing).

To implement it at network level translates into slow(er) loading times, bottle-necking, all due to the fact that the proxy has to look (and filter) every single connection that goes through it.

One device at a time might be insignificant, but if you add a second device and BOTH are let's say, checking facebook at the same time, you will definitely feel the sluggishness.

Then, there's the issue of deployment.

You have to somehow (there are ways via .pam files) broadcast that proxy setting to all clients but auto proxy settings CAN be and IS finicky on windows.

At this time, the best option is to use the two together. Pi-hole (for blocking DNS related requests) + browser based (for cleanup and addressing these one-offs).

Major players already do this self hosted ad serving method (google and facebook).

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So can uBlockRigin be set to just block certain directories (as per my example) or do you have to block every add individually?

thanks

It has the ability to block paths, elements, certain files and it applies them globally.
It also has cloud support (save/restore) and that helps with keeping settings aligned on all devices using UBlock Origin(and same browser).