I used to have a program that blocked IP addresses of advertising sites and replaced all pictures with any picture I wanted to use.

I used a skull and crossbones instead so in place of any ad I had a pirate flag instead.

I forgot the name of the program that did that, it was like some sort of firewall that redirected to 127.0.0.1 and ran a web server that served up any image I wanted for the picture.

I used to add IP addresses to my hosts file to block advertising sites as well.

Now I just use uBlock but they can detect that.

I don't mind advertising as much as long as it doesn't get annoying with pop-ups and other crap. It should not, for example, open up another browser window for me to display an ad.