One day I installed AdGuard on a Pi and routed my parent's traffic through it, effectively blocking ads. I thought they would love to live without ads but she asked me to remove it because the games she plays won't progress unless she watches ads.

oh god, same here. I have Pi-Hole set up with a two layer system so it blocks less for my partner’s phone and laptop and more for everything else.

Couldn't you just change her phone's DNS settings to circumvent the adblocker? Then she could still use the WiFi.

Heh, my dad wanted to use sites where he needed to have ad blocking disabled. I set his device up in adguard home to be ignored by all of the global blocking rules

I started with pihole and eventually switch to AdGuard home. Sucks for apps that "requires" an occasional ad, but 1 thing I still can't figure out is why Hulu won't work anymore.

But I feel you on the benefits and why I won't give one to my parents. These are people who took 2 months to realize my dad isn't on the family text group because he accidentally "left" the group, and why my mom's iPhone stopped ringing because she consciously used the physical mute switch on the side (buried beneath the phone case).

Your wife is the mentality that ensures we can't have nice things. Too many people are willing to be abused, exploited and manipulated just to get their cookie.