Sentence:  In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on <WSD>annoying</WSD> people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To disturb or irritate, especially by continued or repeated acts; to bother with unpleasant deeds.