The company is overhauling the look of AdWords, which has seen hundreds of features added over the 15-plus years since Google first launched the platform for search advertising on desktop.

On Monday, the company announced the start of a major redesign process aimed at rejuvenating the AdWords interface. The last time Google touched up AdWords was way back in 2008. It’s a major undertaking that aims at addressing a number of issues and wishes raised by advertisers. “This re-imagining process is going to take some time, but we’re excited to finally talk about what we’ve been working on for the past year, year and a half,” said Paul Feng, AdWords product management director, by phone last week. AdWords head Jerry Dischler hinted at this overhaul in a keynote discussion at SMX Advanced in Seattle last June, now we are getting the first glimpse at what’s in store. “The reason we’re rebuilding AdWords is because the world has changed so much in the past two years. AdWords is now over 15 years old and launched when Google was just figuring out what search advertising was. We rebuilt it several years ago for a desktop world – smartphones were only [a] year old. Now we are in probably the biggest shift since AdWords was introduced (and I’d argue perhaps ever) with mobile,” said Feng, “And there is now increased demand on marketers and on AdWords as a platform – advertisers are running ads in search, display, shopping, mobile, video. Ultimately, that’s why we’re re-imagining AdWords.”