MOSS: Failed to compile audience. Exception was: 'Failed to obtain crawl status.'

Problem:
When trying to populate audiences nothing happens. Errors are logged into application event log:

5693: Failed to compile audience. Exception was: 'Failed to obtain crawl status.'

and

10016: The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}
to the user DOMAIN\USERACCOUNT SID (S-1-5-21-2339047900-2053458781-3908873488-1605). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

Solution:
The tricky part was that when looking at the DCOM Config list, there are no items with the GUID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}. However, doing a search on the registry revealed that the problematic item was OSearch.

So, in Component Services, give Local Activation permission on the OSearch application to the account that is used as your SSP Service Credentials (Central Administration > Application Management > Manage this Farm's Shared Services > New Shared Services Provider).

Note! If SSP Service Credentials account is different from the account mentioned in the error message, the reasons for the error message is probably slightly different, so give permissions to the user mentioned in the error message.