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).
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Numbers mentioned
| Subject | Metric | Value | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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” |
| SteelAlive | count 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” |
| SteelAlive | activity 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.” |
| SteelAlive | count Physical devices in the phone farm | 60 phones | “Right now we only have 60.” |
| SteelAlive | count 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” |
| SteelAlive | count 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 drop | count | 10 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” |
| SteelAlive | activity 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.” |
| SteelAlive | count 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” |
| SteelAlive | conversion 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 click | conversion 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 accounts | conversion rate | 15% approximate | “But I'd say 15% is a good benchmark, yeah.” |
| SteelAlive | views 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.” |
| SteelAlive | views 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” |
| SteelAlive | views 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.” |