It's rather disingenuous to claim, in context, that society has changed to enjoy advertisements. Indeed, I would make the argument that society will never, ever, get to the place where we enjoy advertising.
Advertising is like the value-added tax: horrific for everybody involved, and society would have killed it a long time ago for that reason, if it wasn't for how much money it makes.
Ads can be done right too, and have been done right plenty of times. If you want to nitpick the GP, do not create such a glass ceiling.
Citation very much needed on your part.
And if you pair it with a capital movement tax, you can make it proportional. But we don't have anything equivalently good for capital movement, so most governments refrain from it.
Either way, if you want to argue that VATs are bad because they only tax one part of economical activity, that's an incredibly bad argument.