I’m on the latest Android version downloaded from the PIA website and have PIC MACE enabled.
When connected to VPN I get absolutely blasted by ads, especially in apps. Banners and full screen ads are everywhere.
Comparing to being connected to my home Wi-Fi that has Pi-Hole for all the ad filtering, the PIA MACE is absolutely useless.
Which makes me believe that it also does very little in terms of blocking tracking, despite stating to do so.
It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, but MACE always seemed to be a watered down Quad9.
Instead I’ve been using the Android setting for a Private DNS, like Quad9 or Mullvad, and setting the PIA app to System DNS.
At least you have MACE. We iOS users doesn’t even have that function in the app
I can try it if you want, if you can provide a good example of a web page with ads.
PIA doesn’t do much as is there mace feature has never worked it failed a test with know malware sites
Sadly, none of those block in-game\in-app ads :\
I guess I’ve been spoiled by Pi-Hole 
I mean, if it doesn’t work, it’s the same as not having it at all, right? 
Does the PIA on iOS allows custom DNS settings? If yes then I think there is workaround
MACE and PiHole are both using DNS Blacklist, the difference is you can’t configure the one in MACE.
I also use MACE when I’m outside home, I won’t say that it’s doing nothing, just not as much as PiHole in my home.
BTW I don’t need to download APK for MACE, PIA has those MACE addresses on website, you can use PIA Apps from Play Store then manually putting MACE IP as DNS
Ha, yeah I hear that! If you have the interest, it’s possible to set up a VPN for Pi-Hole that you can then access the Pi-Hole wherever you are. It’s work, and a little more complication in life, but that a YMMV person-person.
NextDNS or Control D is what you’re looking for. Or Adguard DNS.
Yes but not DoH. So the internet traffic would be exposed
I’ve been thinking about setting Tailscale access for some time now.
I’ll just need to do a bit more research on that since I mostly use PIA VPN on my phone when I’m not home and I don’t want my mobile provider to throttle quality of music or video
If Tailscale provides the traffic encryption I think I will need to get on it sooner than later because ads piss me off 
For me, Andorid apps from Play Store cannot use MACE option however I just used custom DNS 10.0.0.241 & 10.0.0244 (both are MACE DNS from official PIA) in my PIA app so I don’t think there can be any leak with it.