GTM Sauce

The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

Ivan Peskov & Nicholas Tsvietkov -The App Marketing Strategy No One Talks About

Joseph Choi interviews Ivan Peskov and Nicholas Tsvietkov of SteelAlive, who run automated Instagram comment campaigns for apps from a farm of physical phones with a custom Android ROM. Extracted: branded 'social agent' accounts that comment early on viral niche Reels, comment angles (transparent co-founder, story hook, point-to-a-clip), warm-up comments, a health-app campaign (~300K comments -> ~7K clicks, 4x projected return), 15% profile-to-link benchmark, and their earlier TikTok automation (100M views).

Play the episode

9 tactics

A health and fitness app · B2C · SteelAlive client

~300K comments brought ~7K clicks; 4x return projected halfway through
“we warm up the accounts using AI filters. So we basically set up this prompts, the system that analyzes the videos, what's going on in them, and it finds the videos that are the right fit.”
Workedorganic-socialproduct-virality
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

A health and fitness app · B2C · SteelAlive client

Worked better than expected; one comment got 800 likes and likely thousands of profile visits
“The interesting thing is that this kind of co-founder angle that, you know, me and my friends created this app, it worked like surprisingly well.”
Workedorganic-social
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

Viewers ask which app or visit the profile; no numbers
“For example, it starts with a story, which already makes people, you know It's like a hook inside videos, but the same thing applies to text. And, yeah, and it ends with a very soft, like, it's not even a call to action.”
Workedorganic-social
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

Being scaled up now; no numbers given
“It talks about the clip about the app. So it's like It's like they it directs people to our profile to check the video. And we are using something like this a lot right now”
Workedorganic-social
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

Early comments rise to the top; old videos aren't worth it
“So if we find the videos that have viral potential and we one of the first people to post under it, then our comment will be on the top and it will have much more potential to, you know, go kind of go viral inside the comment section.”
Workedorganic-social
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

60 phones produced ~300K comments for one campaign
“We automated a bunch of physical devices, and we did our own version of Android that can load and unload the ROM of the whole device. So each account will have basically its own unique phone.”
Workedorganic-socialorganic-short-video
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

~15% of profile visitors click the link; 3% worst, 50-60% best
“you would have certain, you know, angles to see which one of them, for example, convert better from profile to actual click, right? And very important part of it is bio and the name of the account and and the content on the account.”
Workedorganic-socialexperimentation
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

100M views; top post 2M, but weak as a business and dropped
“So Yeah, we got 100 million views out of it. We mostly we just promoted our client's music.”
Mixedorganic-short-video
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

SteelAlive · B2B · automated Instagram commenting service

Brought first design partners and their best clients
“we had a friend that was a long-time member of your club, and he suggested that he would post like a little post about our work I think about a year ago, and we yeah, we got our I guess best performing clients out of your club.”
Workedcommunityword-of-mouth
The Superwall Podcast · 2026-02-10

Numbers mentioned

SubjectMetricValueQuote
US health app (SteelAlive commenting client)activity volume
Instagram comments posted in the campaign so far (about half the campaign)
300K comments
approximate
“I believe around 300,000, maybe. Yeah, I I guess around that.”
US health app (SteelAlive commenting client)count
Link clicks generated by the comment campaign; stated by host from the slide
7,000 clicks
approximate
“You got 7,000 clicks um on the campaign, and how many comments did that did that take?”
US health app (SteelAlive commenting client)roas
Projected return of the full comment campaign, about half done
4 x
projection
“we project like this campaign to bring like 4x return”
SteelAlivecount
Instagram accounts run per phone per day
12–24 accountsper phone /day“on Instagram we run from 12 to 24 account accounts per day per each phone”
SteelAliveactivity volume
Maximum comments per Instagram account per day
60 commentsper account /day“And each account posts up to 60 comments, so that's it, yeah.”
SteelAlivecount
Physical devices in the phone farm
60 phones“Right now we only have 60.”
SteelAlivecount
Instagram accounts per device per day via ROM swapping (TikTok: 100-200)
20 accountsper phone /day
approximate
“giving us like, I don't know, like 20 accounts on Instagram and around like I think 100 or 200 accounts on TikTok per day per device”
SteelAlivecount
TikTok accounts per device per day via ROM swapping
100–200 accountsper phone /day
estimate
“giving us like, I don't know, like 20 accounts on Instagram and around like I think 100 or 200 accounts on TikTok per day per device”
benchmarkAccounts one normal TikTok device can hold before trust and reach dropcount10 accountsper phone
approximate
“I think on TikTok, you can add somewhat close to 10 accounts per one device, and the more you have, the less trust you get”
SteelAliveactivity volume
Capacity with 1,000 devices (60 accounts each, 45 comments and 3 videos a day per account; ~1.5M videos/month)
21M comments/month
projection
“So in 1 month, that's almost 1.5 million videos and 21 million comments.”
SteelAlivecount
One commenting account's profile visits (5,690 profile activity) shown on screen
4,900 profile visits
approximate
“So this is 5,690 profile activity. Okay, so that's like 4,900 visits, profile visits”
SteelAliveconversion rate
Profile visit -> link-in-bio click for one account (~750 of ~5,000); computed by host
15%
approximate
“What What's that? Seven 750 divided by 5k, that's like 15%.”
aggregateSteelAlive commenting campaigns: profile visit -> link clickconversion rate
3% in bad cases, best 50-60% with engaging content and a well set up profile
3–60%
approximate
“It can be 3% in some bad cases. It can be like up to I think our best was about 50 or 60% when the content was engaging, and the profile was set up in the right way.”
benchmarkGood profile visit -> link-in-bio click rate for commenting accountsconversion rate15%
approximate
“But I'd say 15% is a good benchmark, yeah.”
SteelAliveviews
Views from automated TikTok accounts, mostly promoting clients' music
100M views
approximate
“So Yeah, we got 100 million views out of it. We mostly we just promoted our client's music.”
SteelAliveviews
Best single TikTok: a static image with no text, promotion in the description
2M viewsper video
approximate
“The highest we got per one video was around 2 million views”
SteelAliveviews
Best first video on a new automated TikTok account (200K also seen)
900K viewsper video
approximate
“And one one time, I believe we even had like 900,000 views on the first video.”