To follow up on my original response, I screwed up. I was double-checking the slides and remembered the subdomain case and added the case to the slide, along with "Ends with" based on a prior conversation with an engineer. But I forgot to double-check the UI to make sure Ends with was a listed option. This is why you should not make last minute additions to your presentation, no matter how good the intention. 
I've modified the deck and removed reference to "Ends with" so the copy they distribute should be corrected.
Of course, I couldn't just leave it there - I wanted to understand if there were other possible options. So I went back and talked to two architects on this - one for the Corona search and engine, and one for the Campaign SmartList usage.
- Corona/SOLR doesn't support the "Ends with" search pattern. Sanford's post covers the reason why - it doesn't perform all that much better.
- So then I decided to get creative - what if you did Batch request Trigger to tag the Lead? Keeping in mind that I specifically warned against doing those types of things, in this case I thought the SmartList might resolve into a giant case statement. The Campaign architect was horrified at my suggestion. The approach would soak up a lot of memory and at scale could cause problems.
So where does that leave subdomains? Turns out that ABM is still the best option, because it does a combination of multiple comparisons, including IP analysis, domain parsing to handle multi-national cases, and Lead source data.
Hope this helps. Thanks for pointing that out - you all have forgotten more about this than I know. I'm just trying to fill in the blanks for the areas that I know have been hidden in the past from external view. If my material can help speed up your Campaigns, then I'm a happy camper.
Scott
Hi Scott,
Thanks again for you timely and thorough response! I appreciate it very much.
Nice to know about ABM. Of course, avoiding "contains" alone wouldn't fly as a reason to purchase it. Maybe Marketo should pull some of the ABM functionality into the core product. 
Denise
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