Rocket Fuel Grants Equity Awards Under its 2016 Inducement Equity Incentive Plan

Rocket Fuel Inc. (NASDAQ:FUEL), a leading programmatic marketing platform provider, today announced that it granted equity awards to new employees who are not executive officers of the company on May 8, 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 nonstatutory stock options to purchase an aggregate of up to 55,000 shares of Rocket Fuel common stock to five new employees. Each option has a 10-year term and an exercise price of $2.64 per share, which was the closing price of Rocket Fuel’s common stock on the last trading day prior to the grant date. Each option will vest as to 25 percent of the award on the first anniversary of the employee’s start date and as to 1/48th of the award each month thereafter, subject to continued employment through each vesting date. The company also granted 12,150 restricted stock units (“RSUs”) to two new employees. The RSUs will vest as to 25 percent of the awards one year from the vesting start date (February 10, 2016 for one employee and April 10, 2016 for the other employee) and as to 12.5 percent of the award every six months thereafter, subject to continued employment through each vesting date.

The grants were approved by the compensation committee of the company’s board of directors on May 8, 2016. As required by NASDAQ Listing Rule 5635(c)(4), each grant was made as a material inducement for the employee 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. Rocket Fuel serves more than 75 of the Ad Age 100, three of the top five agency holding company trading desks, and partners with some of the world's leading CRM platforms, marketing platforms and systems integrators. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Rocket Fuel has over 20 offices worldwide.

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Media Contact:Rocket FuelKristin Holloway, [e-mail] Relations:The Blueshirt GroupWhitney Kukulka, [e-mail]