I 'm trying to get a better handle on how Pi-Hole works

[G+_Jason Brown]

I'm trying to get a better handle on how Pi-Hole works. My wife and I signed up for Hulu's ad-free option. Apparently, some shows aren't part of this agreement, so they give you an ad at the beginning and end of certain shows.

 

We just started a show that was supposed to give us those beginning/end ads, but ended up going straight to the show.

 

So, do we think that was because of a glitch on Hulu, or did Pi-Hole just do it's job? Every browser-based ad-blocker always gave us a blank nag screen for 30 seconds. But that didn't happen this time. So it feels like the nature of "ad-free Hulu ads" might be different than the normal ones.

 

There's so much going on with ad-blockers and anti-ad-blockers, that it's hard to keep up with. So I'd love it if someone more versed in the subject could provide a simple primer.

 

What I know (I think) is that ad-blockers only affect 3rd party ads. But natively hosted ads aren't typically affected. So is this some weird case where Hulu has such an indirect connection to the ads that I was able to skip them entirely?

 

I want to try to educate others about ad-blockers, and how different types of ads are affected. But I don't want to regurgitate misinformation.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Pihole is a DNS server. If one of the blacklisted (ad-related) domains is requested, Pihole replies with "that domain name doesn't exist". It's possible Hulu fetches those ads from a separate domain - some place they can also host them up for other customers if needed.