Google’s mapping products tend to attract a lot of attention, and like so many of Google’s efforts, a lot of advertisers, too.  Microsoft wants everyone to know that there are advertising opportunities available through Live Search Maps, too, though.

The “Highlighted Listings” program appears to have been in a sort of closed beta until now; on the Virtual Earth blog, evangelist Chris Pendleton refers to letting a secret out.  And even at this point, it looks like businesses will have to handle matters through email instead of an automated form.

As for what Highlighted Listings achieves, Pendleton writes, “[I]f you do a search for ‘Hotels In San Diego, CA’ on Live Search Maps you’ll get a result set consisting of hotels in the San Diego area; however, the difference is for every Choice Hotels (a subscriber to the Highlighted Listings program) location there’s a branded icon for the respective hotel (e.g. Comfort Inns, have the Comfort Inn logo, etc).”

Pendleton later continues, “Also as a part of the Highlighted Listings program, the links in the enhanced rollover are clickable and will redirect to a URL of your choosing for each location.  That means for each of your locations, you can have the link redirect the user to the exact physical location’s web page.”

Depending on pricing, this may or may not be the sort of thing that companies will rush to embrace.  Yet it at least keeps Microsoft in sight of the Google-led pack, and an upgrade or two seems to be in the works.