Existing data for the electromagnetic proton form factors and for the cross section of the wide angle Compton scattering (WACS) show that the hard two-gluon exchange mechanism (collinear factorization) is still not applicable in the kinematical region where Mandelstam variables s ~ −t ~ −u are about few GeV2 . On the other hand these observables can be described in phenomenological models where spectator quarks are soft which assumes a large contribution due to the soft-overlap mechanism. It turns out that the simple QCD factorization picture is not complete and must also include the soft-overlap contribution which can be described as a certain matrix element in the soft collinear effective theory (SCET). Then the leading power contribution to WACS amplitude is described as a sum of the hard- and soft-spectator contributions. The existing experimental data allows one to check certain conclusions based on the assumption about dominant role of the soft-spectator mechanism.