Imagine you're walking down the organic-products aisle at your favorite grocery store when suddenly the store's app on your phone notifies you that a new line of organic foods is now available.

That can actually possible thanks to iBeacon technology, and 500 Startups-backed Rover wants to make that possible with its software-development kit (SDK). As the startup describes its own place in the chain, it's the piece sitting right in between the iBeacons, an Apple-developed technology for indoor proximity sensing, and a brick-and-mortar retailer's app.

While iBeacon is a fairly new technology that sounds really fancy and futuristic, it's quite dumb, actually. All iBeacon devices do is emit low-energy Bluetooth signals to people's smartphones. The devices alone won't make a store's app do very much.

And that's where Rover comes in. Its SDK, which co-founder and chief executive John Coombs told me takes only two lines of code to integrate into an app, is the layer that picks up the sensors' signals, recognizes that the retailer wants you to receive this ad or notification about the organic food brand when you're in that particular aisle, and gets the app to serve up that that ad or notification.

For marketers, Rover is incredibly easy to use. It feels just like all the other drag-and-drop dashboards they use every day to manage social media and advertising campaigns.

Now, if you're wondering why any of this even matters now that Amazon is so awesome it will deliver groceries to you -- online shopping! -- just remember that 95 percent of purchases are still done in brick-and-mortar locations. iBeacon can become the key to not only personalizing in-person shopping, but also bridging the gap between digital and physical shopping.

"It's basically Amazon in your hand," Coombs said, referring to the ability to mimic Amazon's famous recommendations by serving up personalized and relevant content thanks to the technology.

Naturally, privacy is also of huge importance here. Location-sharing is opt-in, and users have the ability to control notifications from any and all apps on their phones, so Rover's technology and retailer ambitions can only invade so deep.

In the end, Coombs said, it's about making the shopping experience better, and any violations of people's privacy would defeat the purpose.

Of course, Rover is not the only company out there to have figured out how great iBeacons can be for retailers.

For example, Swirl, which raised $8 million last year, is fairly similar to Rover, though it also provides its own iBeacon devices. Shopkick, on the other hand, takes a different approach by having its own app in which all of its partner brands and advertisers can serve up ads and other content and gets a commission from the sales it helps drive.

But Rover hopes it will still differentiate itself, especially since it's released an open source SDK that mobile app developers can tap into. It also offers its product for free to developers and small businesses for up to 2,500 visits per month, and it's compatible with Estimote and RedBear iBeacon devices.

Coombs and Sean Rucker started Rover eight months ago. The startup is relocating to the Bay Area from Toronto. It has raised $400,000 from 500 Startups and an undisclosed angel investor.