In most industries, when something is worth a certain amount, there is generally a way to find out what that amount is. The creator economy, it seems, has decided to skip that step.

Half of marketers misprice what they pay creators, and 40 percent feel they overpaid, according to a survey of 1,000 marketing and procurement leaders by Billion Dollar Boy, the creator marketing company. Danielle Wiley, chief executive of the influencer marketing agency Sway, put the anecdotal figure rather higher: she said brands pay too much 90 percent of the time.

"Imagine the real estate market where you could never look up what a house on your street sold for," said James Nord, founder of Fohr, a predictive creator-marketing platform. "It's about transparency and clarity and building more trust into this market."

Mr. Nord was blunter in his diagnosis: "This is not a functioning market. Prices never go down. There's no clearinghouse, there's no transparency, so it creates this information asymmetry."

Harley Block, chief executive of the brand strategy company IF7, agreed. "Creator pricing is out of control," he said.

The obvious solution — industry-standard pricing guidelines from an organization like the Interactive Advertising Bureau — does not exist. The I.A.B. has published definitions and taxonomy for the creator economy, but as of yet, no pricing guidance. (One imagines the meetings.)

Into this vacuum have stepped various agencies and technology platforms, each offering tools meant to bring order to the chaos. Fohr recently introduced a "Price Check" feature that lets brands and creators evaluate whether an offer is fair. Billion Dollar Boy has added pricing features to its Companion platform. An A.I.-powered assistant called Nutcake automates much of the operational complexity of creator campaigns.

Jamie Gutfreund, founder of the consultancy Creator Vision, said these tools are helpful but narrowly applicable. Nearly everyone interviewed pointed to the variables that make standardization difficult: a price spike in the fourth quarter, a "Love Island" contestant whose moment is now.

"The manager goes, 'That's nice, I'm glad your calculator said that, but he's double,'" Mr. Block said, describing a hypothetical negotiation.

Still, such tools may serve a more important purpose for mid-tier and marginalized creators, who often lack the leverage of their better-known peers. Osman Badat, a financial adviser to creators who goes by The Social Accountant online, said he frequently sees creators with similar engagement rates receive vastly different offers — and that creators of color are particularly likely to be underpriced, not over.

"There needs to be a place where people could go and say, 'Wait a second, this was the benchmark. Why are you only offering me this?'" Mr. Badat said.

Technology, Mr. Block noted, can inform a negotiation. But it cannot conduct one.

"The people that are making these tools don't set the prices," he said.

Which may be the creator economy's way of saying that even in the age of algorithms, someone still has to pick up the phone.

Original story published in Digiday: "Creator industry admits that fee pricing is out of control, but can't agree on a fix"