Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum appears in nearly every frame of a 30-second, widely run commercial warning parents and children about sex offenders online.

''This ad needed a message. It needed a messenger,'' he said Thursday. ``It couldn't be just done with words.''

But Gov. Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink -- whose public service announcements were nominated for regional Emmy awards last year -- stayed out of the ads. And unlike McCollum, a Republican who hired his 2006 campaign media consultant to produce and air his ad, Crist and Sink sought competitive bids for the ad contracts.

''CFO Sink wanted to make sure Floridians were getting the best deal possible, so she required a competitive bidding process,'' said Kyra Jennings, a spokeswoman for the Democratic officeholder. ``There's also a big distinction from the attorney general's ads in that they feature him so prominently.''

McCollum's $1.4 million media blitz has become a target for the Florida Democratic Party, which says the ads cross the line from public service announcements into political commercials. Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff singled out a $550 expenditure for makeup among the production costs.

''While the attorney general claims that this ad campaign was about promoting public safety, it shouldn't take a $550 makeup job in a vain attempt to make him look good politically,'' he said.

McCollum is expected to run for reelection in 2010, though he may run for governor if Crist does not seek another term. Asked about the makeup after he did a cybercrime presentation at Westpine Middle School in Sunrise, McCollum said, ``I didn't know how much the makeup artist costs. It's a package . . . the makeup comes with it.''

In his most extensive comments on the ads since The Miami Herald wrote about them last week, McCollum emphasized that they were bought not with tax dollars, but with money from settlements with companies accused of hiding the costs of cellphone services. The ads run by Crist and Sink were funded with taxpayer money.

McCollum said he hired his former campaign consultant, Chris Mottola, because the state's competitive bidding process was ''very slow, very complicated.'' He cited an exemption in state law that allows him to use a no-bid contract for ``artistic services.''

The ad shows McCollum speaking directly to the camera about the dangers of Internet sex predators, with children walking school hallways and using a laptop in the background.

''The development of the ad is artistic. It's how you present it,'' McCollum said. ``You got 30 seconds to be able to tell somebody something.''

The governor's ''Explore Adoption'' campaign last year included five different television videos, including one featuring a boy with his adoptive father at the batting cages.

The cost of producing and airing the videos, as well as related radio and billboard ads, was about $650,000. Sink's ''My Safe Florida Homes'' ads, which cost $1.06 million, show consumers on their computers applying for free hurricane inspections.

For the attorney general's ads, Philadelphia-based Mottola received 10 percent of the cost of the television time, plus about $38,000 for production, according to McCollum's office. That means he earned about $136,000 on the deal -- more than the $87,511 he was paid by McCollum during the 2006 campaign.

''We felt as a team that we had the very best in the business to make this film at a very good price,'' McCollum said. ```I would expect if we continue to run this ad we would probably use him again to make the buy.''

McCollum has approval from the Florida Legislature to spend another $1.1 million in settlement cash on the cybercrime ad.

It is currently airing in South Florida in English and Spanish, where it ran for part of January and all of February. It also ran for six weeks over the summer in Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City and Gainesville.

McCollum's office released an e-mail from a mother who said that until she saw the ad, she didn't know where to turn when her daughter received naked pictures on her cellphone.

''The good news is that we've gotten their attention,'' McCollum said. ``I don't care if anyone wants to criticize the ad. It's been effective.''

Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times researcher Lynette Norris contributed to this report.

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