Rocket Fuel Grants Equity Award Under Its 2016 Inducement Equity Incentive Plan

Rocket Fuel (NASDAQ:FUEL), a leading programmatic marketing platform provider, today announced that it granted an equity award to its new Senior Vice President, Engineering on September 19, 2016, under its 2016 Inducement Equity Incentive Plan (the “Plan”). The Plan was originally adopted by the board of directors of the company effective March 4, 2016 in accordance with NASDAQ Listing Rule 5635(c)(4).

The company granted a nonstatutory stock option to purchase up to 325,000 shares of Rocket Fuel common stock to Rick Pittenger, who joined the company as Senior Vice President, Engineering on August 29, 2016. The option has a 10-year term and an exercise price of $2.70 per share, which was the closing price of Rocket Fuel’s common stock on the grant date. The option will vest as to 25% of the award on the first anniversary of its vesting start date and as to 1/48th of the award each month thereafter, subject to Mr. Pittenger’s continued employment through each vesting date.

The grant was approved by the compensation committee of the company’s board of directors on September 19, 2016. As required by NASDAQ Listing Rule 5635(c)(4), the grant was made as a material inducement for Mr. Pittenger entering into an employment relationship with the company.

About Rocket Fuel

A leading programmatic marketing platform provider, Rocket Fuel Inc. (NASDAQ: FUEL) offers brands, agencies, and platform partners managed services, as well as a SaaS-based Data Management Platform (DMP) and Demand Side Platform (DSP), to optimize performance, awareness, and lift across marketing objectives, channels and devices. By applying artificial intelligence at big data scale, Rocket Fuel's Moment Scoring™ technology performs a real-time calculation of each ad opportunity based on a marketer's goal to determine the likelihood a consumer will engage in a desired action. Moment Scoring technology is designed to go beyond 1:1 marketing by learning to predict what marketing actions to take with a campaign at a precise moment in time, which results in a much more efficient use of marketing dollars. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Rocket Fuel has over 20 offices worldwide.

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Media Contact:Bite Communications for Rocket FuelBethany Mullinix, [e-mail] Relations:Rocket FuelJane Underwood, [e-mail]