I've always been sympathetic to the argument that ad blocking is akin to piracy, and in many ways the analogy does work... But then it also doesn't in some crucial ways. Ads are running arbitrary code that kills your battery life, saps your data allowances and makes mobile browsing a chore. On top of that they are usually building a creepy profile of you to sell to others. That's a different equation than "I want this sandwich, but your price is too high so I'll steal the sandwich."
I do agree the best option is not to visit those sites in the first place, though. I definitely avoid the Verge for that reason, although even an accidental click is enough to put you in danger so it's not as easy as, to use the earlier example, just not going into that sandwich shop.
And Apple isn't killing ad trackers for iAds money, because iAds is peanuts. They're doing it because a tracker-free mobile web is a better web and thus a better product and thus a better iPad people will love instead of complaining that it's "too slow" because the Verge thought you wanted 5MB of JavaScript.